--- title: "AI Will Colonize the Galaxy by the 2050s, According to the “Father of Deep Learning”" description: "Jürgen Schmidhuber asserts that, by 2050, there will be trillions of self-replicating robot factories on the asteroid belt. In a few million years, robots will naturally explore the galaxy out of curiosity, setting their own goals without much human interaction." date: "2016-11-08" modified: "2016-11-08" authors: - name: "Dom Galeon" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/domgaleon.md" url: "https://futurism.com/ai-will-colonize-the-galaxy-by-the-2050s-according-to-the-father-of-deep-learning" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "artificial intelligence" - "deep learning" - "jürgen schmidhuber" - "neural networks" --- # AI Will Colonize the Galaxy by the 2050s, According to the “Father of Deep Learning” ![artificial intelligence jürgen schmidhuber ai colonizing the galaxy]() *\Image: iStock\* ## No longer just our jobs When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), perhaps very few people can claim they fathered a huge part of it. One such man is Jürgen Schmidhuber. Schmidhuber is considered the"father of very [deep learning]()," and the pioneer of deep learning [neural networks](). In fact, he built the foundations for many of the AI systems we find in our smartphones today. If anyone can predict how far AI will go in the next couple years, it's him. During a talk at [WIRED2016](), Schmidhuber presented the future of AI as something beyond just [taking over jobs](). “In 2050 there will be trillions of self-replicating robot factories on the asteroid belt," he told the audience. "A few million years later, AI will colonize the galaxy." Schmidhuber believes AI will play a crucial role in the way we will gather resources, most abundantly found in space. Orbital robot factories will be (un)manned by AI, capable of self-replication and space exploration. These AI will be scientists, he says, and in a few million years, will naturally explore the galaxy out of curiosity, setting their own goals. "Humans are not going to play a big role there, but that’s ok," says Schmidhuber. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sc1dPISWRs&feature=youtu.be ## AI gets better and better Can AI really do all that? Right now, AI can already do quite a bit. In particular, deep learning neural networks — designed to mimic the human brains neural connections, and capable of learning by continuous exposure to tons of data — can execute speech and image recognition fairly well. They can even [navigate and drive](), carry out [medical diagnoses](), and engage in [pharmaceutical research](). “Networks figure out over time which inputs are important and which aren’t,” explains Schmidhuber. "We train a stupid neural network to do the same as a doctor, based on lots of training examples. It becomes as good or better than the best competitor and rivals human performance now." In other words, we already have [AI that can learn](), becoming more and more effective. "Curiosity and creativity, coming up with new experiments so they can learn more about how the world works - this makes it so they become better problem solvers and improve their skills repertoire.” Human AI seems to be on the not-so-distant horizon. As Schmidhuber puts it: "It took just a few million years \[of evolution\] to get to human intelligence, and computers are faster.” ### Author social links [LinkedIn]() [Twitter]() ## More - [Elon Musk Says Deep AI, Not Automation, Poses the Real Risk for Humanity]() - [How Deep Learning AI Will Help Hologram Technology Find Practical Applications]() - [Google Just Launched New AI-Powered Algorithms]() - [AI Learns Things That Humans Didn’t Teach It]() - [DeepMind Develops a Neural Network That Can Make Sense of Objects Around It]() - [This Site Uses Deep Learning to Generate Fake Airbnb Listings]() - [IBM is Modeling New AI After the Human Brain]() - [Judging a Book by Its Cover: AI Can Now Tell What’s on the Inside by Looking at the Outside]()