Geoffrey Hinton, the 75-year-old credited as a pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI), is now warning of the dangers it can bring.
He was instrumental in developing the technology that serves as the base for today’s AI systems a decade ago. However, he has recently expressed concerns over the potential dangers of AI.
On Monday (24 Apr), the ‘Godfather of AI’ shared with The New York Times (NYT) that he had left Google. There, he designed machine learning algorithms for over 10 years.
Upon his departure, Hinton also gave an ominous warning about the dangers generative AI brings.
Generative AI is, essentially, a type of artificial intelligence system that can generate its own content based on given prompts and commands. The most well-known of such systems currently is ChatGPT.
Although Hinton played a crucial role in the development of the technology, he now tells NYT that he regrets it.
In 2012, alongside two graduate students at the University of Toronto, he created the technology that now powers most AI systems.
A little over 10 years on, he is now cautioning others about the banes of his brainchild.
As AI becomes more popular than ever, Hinton and other tech leaders question whether its benefits outweigh the risks.
With its current capabilities, AI is already able to spread misinformation if in the wrong hands. It may soon pose a risk to jobs, careers, and even humanity itself.
“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” Hinton told NYT.
In a separate interview with BBC, Hinton called the risk posed by AI chatbots “quite scary”.
He noted that while AI has yet to surpass human intelligence, it just might do that very soon.
Source: Sky News
“Right now, what we’re seeing is things like GPT-4 eclipses a person in the amount of general knowledge it has, and it eclipses them by a long way. In terms of reasoning, it’s not as good, but it does already do simple reasoning.”
He explained that, right now, these AI bots eclipse a regular person’s general knowledge by a long way. However, their reasoning skills are not as advanced as humans.
“And given the rate of progress, we expect things to get better quite fast. So we need to worry about that,” he added.
That being said, the 75-year-old told BBC that, at least for now, we should not stop developing AI technology.
He thinks that AI will still deliver more benefits than risks, and that even if the United States stops developing it, China will still continue.
Highlighting that he is not an expert on policy, he urges governments to be responsible regarding AI development.
They need to put “a lot of thought into how to stop it going rogue,” he emphasised.
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Featured image adapted from Noah Berger/AP via Bloomberg.
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