- Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer in AI research, has announced his departure from Google after more than a decade of service.
- Despite his groundbreaking work in AI, Dr. Hinton has expressed concerns about the potential dangers of the technology, including the potential for "bad actors" to use AI for malicious purposes
- Dr. Hinton is not alone in his concerns, as other prominent figures in academia and the tech industry have also called for increased caution and regulation of AI development.
Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, widely recognized as the "Godfather of AI," has announced his departure from Google after more than a decade of service.
Dr. Hinton has expressed remorse for his work on artificial intelligence development, emphasizing the dangers that it may bring to human civilization. Though he felt regret, Dr. Geoffrey Hinton knew that artificial intelligence would have been developed regardless of his involvement, according to a New York Times article.
In the NYT today, Cade Metz implies that I left Google so that I could criticize Google. Actually, I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google. Google has acted very responsibly.
— Geoffrey Hinton (@geoffreyhinton) May 1, 2023
Potential advancements in areas like education and drug research have experts in the field comparing the new AI systems to the advent of the web browser in the first half of the 1990s. However, many experts are worried about the prospect of letting something harmful loose on the public.
Already being used for spreading false information, generative AI may one day endanger humankind's ability to find gainful employment. Dr. Geoffrey Hinton noted that it's hard to foresee a world where "bad actors" are prevented from utilizing AI for evil purposes.
AI Possible To Exceed Human Intelligence Soon
Until Microsoft launched Bing with OpenAI integrated, Dr. Hinton was pleased with how Google was handling AI technology, per The Verge. This challenged Google's core business and sparked a "code red" response within the company. The computer scientist worries that an onslaught of misleading news and information would make it hard to tell the truth in a world where competition is so fierce.
Furthermore, Geoffrey Hinton is concerned that as AI develops the ability to write and execute its own code, it will replace manual labor and possibly even humanity.
He said that back then, few people, including himself, supported the notion that artificial intelligence might transcend human intellect and regarded it as a distant possibility. The AI pioneer used to think that the possibility of AI surpassing human intelligence would be at least 30-50 years away, but now he has changed his mind.
- Hinton Joins Call For AI Development Freeze
Geoffrey Hinton has spent his whole professional life investigating neural networks, which play a pivotal role in modern AI systems. However, he is most well known for developing a system to recognize common objects via training images in 2012.
In 2013, Google bought DNNresearch, the business founded by Hinton, whose idea inspired the substantial advancement that resulted in the generative technology we use today.
Dr. Hinton and two of his longstanding collaborators, in 2018, won the Turing Award, generally regarded as the most prestigious honor in computing and sometimes referred to as the "Nobel Prize of computing," for their innovative research on neural networks.
The transformation of Dr. Geoffrey Hintorn from an AI pioneer to a forecaster of doom comes at a pivotal time for the technology sector.
Many people share Hinton's concerns regarding the moral and security repercussions of AI. Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak are just two of the prominent figures in academia and the IT industry who recently signed an open letter calling for a six-month freeze in AI research to address these concerns, according to Engadget.
Hinton is a significant player in the IT industry. Consequently, his thoughts are taken seriously.
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