Intelligence may indeed be a benign influence creating isolated groups of philosopher-kings far apart in the heavens... On the other hand, intelligence may be a cancer of purposeless technological exploitation, sweeping across a galaxy as irresistibly as it has swept across our own planet.

I think that the artificial-intelligence people are making a lot of noise recently, claiming that artificial intelligence is making huge progress and we're going to be outstripped by the machines.

There is a great satisfaction in building good tools for other people to use.

If it should turn out that the whole of physical reality can be described by a finite set of equations, I would be disappointed, I would feel that the Creator had been uncharacteristically lacking in imagination.

The biggest breakthrough in the next 50 years will be the discovery of extraterrestrial life. We have been searching for it for 50 years and found nothing. That proves life is rarer than we hoped, but does not prove that the universe is lifeless. We are only now developing the tools to make our searches efficient and far-reaching, as optical and radio detection and data processing move forward.

The language that nature speaks is the same language that we invented for mathematics. That's just an amazing piece of luck, which we don't understand.

The important thing is that we now have the tools to sequence all kinds of animals and plants and microbes - as well as humans. It is not important that we didn't actually finish the human sequence yet.