‘I don’t think they should scale this up more until they have understood whether they can control it,’ Geoffrey Hinton says.
Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI” who worked at Google for more than a decade, has quit the company, citing concerns about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Hinton developed the technology that paved the way for current AI systems, including ChatGPT, but he now regrets his contributions to the field.
In an interview with The New York Times, Hinton warned that in the short term, AI could lead to the proliferation of fake images, videos, and text, making it difficult for people to discern what is true. However, in the long term, he believes that AI systems could eventually learn unexpected, dangerous behavior, which could lead to the development of killer robots.
Hinton also expressed concerns about the impact of AI on the labor market and called for regulation to ensure that companies like Google and Microsoft do not get locked into a dangerous race. He suggested that these companies might already be working on dangerous systems in secret and should not scale up AI until they can control it.
Hinton is not the only AI expert to warn about the dangers of the technology. In recent months, two major open letters have warned about the “profound risks to society and humanity” posed by AI, signed by many of the people who helped create it.
Hinton’s concerns about AI have grown over the past year, as the technology has advanced rapidly with the development of systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. He believes that these systems are beginning to behave in ways that are not possible in the human brain and that they will become even more dangerous as companies further refine and train their AI systems.
As AI continues to evolve, Hinton warns that it is essential to understand its capabilities and ensure that it is used responsibly to benefit society.
