Geoffrey Hinton, often called “The Godfather of AI“Spent most of his career singing the praises of artificial intelligence. But now he’s warning of the dangers.
In an interview with New York TimesHinton spoke about his decision to leave Googlewhere he co-founded Google Brain, a research team that develops artificial intelligence systems.
“It’s hard to see how you can stop bad actors from using it for bad things,” Hinton said.
Hinton joins several high-profile AI pioneers concerned about the future of the technology. After ChatGPT debuted in March, An open letter signed by over 1,000 people Requested a six-month moratorium on development of systems more advanced than ChatGPT-4.
In a tweet earlier today, Elon Musk warned that “even a benign reliance on AI/automation is dangerous to civilization.”
Even a benign reliance on AI/automation is dangerous to civilization to the extent that we forget how machines work.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 1, 2023
Spreading false information
Hinton has several concerns about AI. But the biggest pressure is the spread of misinformation. From DeepFax to AI-powered bots, the internet is full Fake photos, videos and stories. Just last week, Universal Music had to pull down Fake Drake song created by AI It was so believable that most people thought it was singing.
Hinton says that reality vs. The confusion between AI-generated content will make it so that people “can no longer know what is true.”
Learn to fast
Like the scientists and thought leaders who signed the open letter a few months ago, Hinton is concerned about the speed at which AI technology is advancing. Big tech companies like Google and Microsoft compete for AI dominance, fueling the race.
“Look at what it was like five years ago and what it’s like now,” Hinton said. “Take the difference and spread it further. It’s scary.”
Becoming smarter than humans
Hinton is one of the people responsible for developing a type of machine learning that uses artificial neural networks. He once said, “The only way to make artificial intelligence work is to compute like a human brain.”
But now he is concerned that AI may become more advanced than the human brain.
“The idea that this stuff could actually be smarter than people — few people believed that,” he said Time. “But most people thought it was far away. And I thought it was far away. I thought it was 30 to 50 years away or even more. Obviously, I don’t think so anymore.”
Hinton, 75, now devotes the rest of his life to making sure the technology he helped create doesn’t destroy civilization. Does he feel bad about the world he helped enter?
“I console myself with the usual excuse: If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have,” he said.
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