Hawking makes a careful statement and employs the word "seems" not as a padding but intentionally. I take his statement at face value and still don't get to the

Hawking makes a careful statement and employs the word "seems" not as a padding but intentionally. I take his statement at face value and still don't get to the confident deductions you make. For one "seems" is allowing room to account for something currently or forever invisible. And then how can you assert that machines don't have an afterlife?