From KCRW in Santa Monica and PRI, Public Radio International, this is To the Point.

Artificial intelligence is the promise worth the peril.

Hello again, I'm Armin Alney, and this is To the Poet from Public Radio International.

A daily look at the issues Americans care about most. Artificial intelligence might be the death of humanity. That's from no less

an authority than Stephen Hawking, the world's best-known physicist. Other scientists are heeding

his warning that programs could outsmart their programmers with unintended consequences.

Massive investment by Google, Facebook, and others, they say,

is making that much more likely to happen much sooner than anybody expected.

How do Americans feel about science fiction made real?

Will developers agree not to go too far before it's too late?

Today's talking point, reintroducing an overlooked civil rights leader.

First, here's the news.

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Support for To the Point comes from the members of

KCRW and from the Public Radio International Program Fund. Hello again, I'm

Armin Alney with a special rebroadcast of To the Point. Earlier this year, Stephen Hawking,

the world-renowned physicist, wrote that it's time to get serious about science fiction made real. We'll hear about

the promise and the perils of artificial intelligence. Today's talking point, Stokely Carmichael,

was a powerful civil rights leader in the 1960s who became a black nationalist before leaving

this country for Africa. His biographer says he was as influential as Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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