“We’re in trouble.”

Over two months ago, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking asked the entire world to “ask him anything” in a post in Reddit’s science community.

Today, his long-awaited answers were posted in his first ever AMA. Since Hawking suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease, the only way he’s able to communicate is by typing with facial movements. As you can imagine, this is a laborious and time-consuming process.

Over 9,000 questions were asked. Hawking answered nine of them.

Hawking warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence (A.I.), but he implies that the media’s perception is quite wrong.

We’ve heard their rhetoric before—If we’re not careful then evil robots will enslave us and take over the world. But Hawking says that A.I. won’t be evil for evil’s sake.

He explains:

“The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence. A super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble. You’re probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice, but if you’re in charge of a hydroelectric green energy project and there’s an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let’s not place humanity in the position of those ants.”

And he dismissed the warnings of other futurists who believe that A.I. is definitely going to be a problem in our lifetime. The truth? We’re not sure when we’ll develop a human-level A.I. Nobody can answer that question.

He says:

“There’s no consensus among AI researchers about how long it will take to human-level AI and beyond, so please don’t trust anyone who claims to know for sure that it will happen in your lifetime or that it won’t happen in your lifetime. When it eventually does occur, it’s likely to be either the best or worst thing ever to happen to humanity, so there’s huge value in getting it right.”

But what about the benefits of A.I.? Eventually, technology will reach a point when our jobs will be automated. But this won’t necessarily free us or solve any problems if we’re still living in an unequal society.

Hawking says:

“Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”

While most of Hawking’s responses concentrated on meaty scientific discussion, he still had time to answer some more light-hearted questions.

We learned that his favorite song is Rod Stewart’s “Have I Told You Lately.”

And his favorite television show should come as no surprise. Fittingly, he’s a fan of The Big Bang Theory.

Click here to view the entire AMA.