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Some claim that computers will, by 2050, achieve human capabilities. Of course, in some respects they already have.

Martin Rees

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Martin Rees
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: June 23
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
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Physicist
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University Teacher
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Baron Rees of Ludlow
Martin John Rees
Baron Rees of Ludlow
OM
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Professor Martin John Rees
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More quotes by Martin Rees

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In the case of climate change, the threat is long-term and diffuse and requires broad international action for the benefit of people decades in the future. And in politics, the urgent always trumps the important, and that is what makes it a very difficult and challenging issue.
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God invented space so that not everything had to happen in Princeton.
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Science is a part of culture. Indeed, it is the only truly global culture because protons and proteins are the same all over the world, and it's the one culture we can all share.
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It's better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science-it's a lot more fun, and no more likely to be wrong.
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I would support peaceful co-existence between religion and science because they concern different domains. Anyone who takes theology seriously knows that it's not a matter of using it to explain things that scientists are mystified by.
Martin Rees
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I think a few hundred years from now we'll start having the 'posthuman' era of different species.
Martin Rees
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If we ever establish contact with intelligent aliens living on a planet around a distant star ... They would be made of similar atoms to us. They could trace their origins back to the big bang 13.7 billion years ago, and they would share with us the universe's future. However, the surest common culture would be mathematics.
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Science isn't just for scientists - it's not just a training for careers.
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Indeed, our everyday world presents intellectual challenges just as daunting as those of the cosmos and the quantum, and that is where 99 per cent of scientists focus their efforts. Even the smallest insect, with its intricate structure, is far more complex than either an atom or a star.
Martin Rees
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Scientists habitually moan that the public doesn't understand them. But they complain too much: public ignorance isn't peculiar to science. It's sad if some citizens can't tell a proton from a protein. But it's equally sad if they're ignorant of their nation's history, can't speak a second language, or can't find Venezuela or Syria on a map.
Martin Rees
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Experiments that crash atoms together could start a chain reaction that erodes everything on Earth.
Martin Rees
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In future, children won't perceive the stars as mere twinkling points of light: they'll learn that each is a 'Sun', orbited by planets fully as interesting as those in our Solar system.
Martin Rees
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Devastation could arise insidiously, rather than suddenly, through unsustainable pressure on energy supplies, food, water and other natural resources. Indeed, these pressures are the prime 'threats without enemies' that confront us.
Martin Rees
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In this century, not only has science changed the world faster than ever, but in new and different ways. Targeted drugs, genetic modification, artificial intelligence, perhaps even implants into our brains - may change human beings themselves.
Martin Rees
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The U.S., France, Germany and Canada have all responded to the financial crisis by boosting rather than cutting their science funding. The U.K. has not.
Martin Rees
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The extreme sophistication of modern technology - wonderful though its benefits are - is, ironically, an impediment to engaging young people with basics: with learning how things work.
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I think all countries need to aim to cut the CO2 emissions per person, taking account of externalities like imports and exports.
Martin Rees
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There may be organic life out there, or maybe machines created by long-dead civilizations, but any signals, even if they are difficult to decode, would tell us that the concepts of logic and physics are not limited to the hardware in human skulls, and will transform our view of the universe.
Martin Rees
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In the beginning there were only probabilities. The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.
Martin Rees
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I'm a technological optimist in that I do believe that technology will provide solutions that will allow the world in 2050 to support 9 billion people at an acceptable standard of living. But I'm a political pessimist in that I am concerned about whether the science will be appropriately applied.
Martin Rees