Nikolas Badminton wrote a number of super short ‘Sci-fi Horror Stories’ for the University of Waterloo.

Sci-fi horror stories: Could they happen in real life?

In a 2014 interview with the BBC, physicist Stephen Hawking warned: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

From movies like The Terminator or Minority Report to modern television dramas including Homeland and Black Mirror, there is no shortage of fictional examples of technology used for nefarious purposes. But in a period of breakneck technological advances, could fiction ever become fact? Or has it already?

We asked Nikolas Badminton, a global futurist and moderator of Waterloo’s future-focused Beyond 60 kickoff lecture and special curator of Hacking the Future: Waterloo Innovation Summit 2017, for his take on the real risk of some popular science-fiction scenarios.

Scenarios covered include:

• Rise of the machines/AI takes over (The Terminator)
• Hijacked autonomous vehicles (Minority Report)
• Ransomware threats to embedded medical devices (Homeland)
• Big Brother surveillance (1984)
• Wearable devices used to deny medical coverage (Elysium)

Read more at the University of Waterloo Magazine

Waterloo Innovation Summit – September 13th to 15th, 2017

Join Nikolas and other great speakers at the Waterloo Innovation Summit: Hacking the Future.