Michio Kaku

Michio Kaku (born 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, a co-founder of string field theory, and one of the most visible science popularizers of the past two decades through best-sellers like “Physics of the Impossible” and countless television appearances. His stock-in-trade is the sweeping forecast about the future of technology and civilization.

A shrug at the AI hype

Asked directly about generative AI on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” in August 2023, Kaku declined to join either the boosters or the doomers. He described chatbots as “glorified tape recorders” that stitch together human-made text without knowing true from false — “that has to be put in by a human,” he said — and argued that public anxiety over the technology was misplaced. In his telling, the systems will boost productivity but do not represent the epochal leap their promoters claim.

Notably, Kaku has signed no open letters, launched no products and joined neither the safety campaigns nor the accelerationist chorus around AI. His attention points elsewhere: he argues the genuinely transformative technology is quantum computing, which he predicts will eventually eclipse today’s AI. On the AI debate itself, he is essentially a bystander — interested, unimpressed, and unaligned.