Sci-Fi 'most internationalized' literary genre: Chinese writer Liu Cixin

Updated: 2015-06-01 10:03

(English.news.cn)

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While the series scores impressively in overseas market, Liu said China's science fiction still has a long way to go before reaching the world-class level.

Recently, warnings about the prospect of artificial intelligence took on a new weight following dire predictions from heavyweights like Stephen Hawking or Bill Gates that the full development of supercomputer could lead humanity to extinction, words usually seen in sci-fi novel or movies.

On the hotly debated topic, the sic-fi author shared his insights with Xinhua. "I think these words are alarmist," he said, referring to an article predicting the abominations people create will become their masters by 2040.

There are formidable challenges that hold back the human being from obtaining the power to build a computer with human-level intelligent in the foreseeable future, he said.

For instance, human brain contains 100 billion neurons, and that makes the task of developing software that could mimic the brain's neural network seem like a hopeless project, Liu said.

"This is a mistaken assumption that all the technological obstacles that are theoretically solvable will be removed in reality sooner or later," he said.

Meanwhile, Liu warned that "we have underestimated the power of the machine, as people tend to associate it with emotionally intelligent robots which we can communicated with."

However, once it is created, there is no way for people to understand what it will do, he said, "Its increased cognitive ability over us would be vaster than the anti-human gap."

The BEA is the most important international book fair in North America that dates back to 1947.

This year, China was invited as a Guest of Honor for BEA 2015's Global Market Forum program. Twenty-five renowned Chinese authors had dialogue and interaction with their foreign peers and readers during the expo.

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