A outstanding artificial intelligence researcher referred to as the “Godfather of AI” has quit his job at Google – and says he now partly regrets his work advancing the burgeoning technology due to risks it poses to society.
Dr. Geoffrey Hinton is a renowned computer scientist who’s widely credited with laying the AI groundwork that eventually led to the creation of popular chatbots reminiscent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other advanced systems.
The 75-year-old told the Latest York Times that he left Google in order that he can speak openly concerning the risks of unrestrained AI development – including the spread of misinformation, upheaval in the roles market and other, more nefarious possibilities.
“I console myself with the traditional excuse: If I hadn’t done it, any person else would have,” Hinton said in an interview published on Monday.
“Take a look at the way it was five years ago and the way it’s now,” Hinton added later within the interview. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”
Hinton fears that AI will only develop into more dangerous in the long run — with “bad actors” potentially exploiting advanced systems “for bad things” that will probably be difficult to stop.
Hinton informed Google of his plans to resign last month and personally spoke last Thursday with company CEO Sundar Pichai, in accordance with the report. The pc scientist didn’t reveal what he and Pichai discussed throughout the phone call.
Geoffrey Hinton fears that AI is advancing too rapidly for humans to manage.Bloomberg via Getty Images
Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean defended the corporate’s AI efforts.
“We remain committed to a responsible approach to A.I. We’re continually learning to grasp emerging risks while also innovating boldly,” Dean said in an announcement.
The Post has reached out to Google for further comment.
Hinton is the newest of a growing variety of experts who’ve warned that AI could cause significant harm without proper oversight and regulation. In March, Elon Musk and greater than 1,000 other outstanding figures within the AI sector called for a six-month pause in advanced AI development, citing its potential “profound risks to society and humanity.”
Within the interview, Hinton expressed concern that artificial intelligence has already begun to outpace the human mind in some facets.
He also cited concerns that the pace of AI development will increase as Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Google and other tech giants race to guide the sector – with potentially dangerous consequences.
AI chatbots have exploded in popularity in recent months.SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Geoffrey Hinton informed Google of his resignation last month.REUTERS
Hinton fears that advanced AI could eventually spiral uncontrolled as systems gain the flexibility to create and run their very own computer code – and even power weapons without human control.
“The concept that these items could actually get smarter than people — a couple of people believed that,” Hinton added. “But most individuals thought it was way off. And I assumed it was way off. I assumed it was 30 to 50 years and even longer away. Obviously, I not think that.”
In a recent interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Pichai himself warned that AI would cause job losses for “knowledge staff,” reminiscent of writers, accountants, architects and software engineers.
Pichai also detailed bizarre scenarios during which Google’s AI programs have developed “emergent properties” – or learned unexpected skills during which they weren’t trained.
Google is racing with tech rivals to develop AI.AP
Since 2013, Hinton had split his time between roles as a professor on the University of Toronto and as a Google engineering fellow. He had worked for the tech giant since Google acquired a startup he co-founded with two students, Alex Krishevsky and Ilya Sutskever.
The trio developed a neural network that trained itself to discover common objects, reminiscent of cars or animals, by analyzing hundreds of photos. Sutskever currently serves as chief scientist for OpenAI.
In 2018, Hinton was a joint recipient of the Turing Award – often identified because the computing world’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize – for work on neural networks that was described as “major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.”
A lengthy bio for Hinton on Google’s website lauds his accomplishments – noting he “made major breakthroughs in deep learning which have revolutionized speech recognition and object classification.”
