Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI), has resigned from his job at Google, warning about the potential dangers of AI.
Hinton, who is widely considered the “godfather” of AI, stated in a New York Times article that he regrets his work and believes that chatbots have the potential to overtake human intelligence.
In an interview with the BBC, Hinton elaborated on his concerns about chatbots, stating that while they are not currently more intelligent than humans, they soon could be.
“Right now, what we’re seeing is things like GPT-4 eclipse 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. And given the rate of progress, we expect things to get better quite fast. So we need to worry about that.”
Hinton also expressed concern about the potential misuse of AI by “bad actors.” He gave the example of a hypothetical scenario in which Russian President Vladimir Putin gives robots the ability to create their own sub-goals, which could lead to the creation of sub-goals like “I need to get more power”.
Hinton stated that this scenario is a “kind of worst-case scenario, kind of a nightmare scenario”.
Hinton stressed that he did not want to criticize Google and that the company had been “very responsible.”
In a statement, Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean said, “We remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. We’re continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly.”
Hinton’s research on deep learning and neural networks has paved the way for current AI systems like ChatGPT, BBC reported.
However, the British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist warned that the type of intelligence being developed by AI is very different from human intelligence. “We’re biological systems and these are digital systems.
The big difference is that with digital systems, you have many copies of the same set of weights, the same model of the world. And all these copies can learn separately but share their knowledge instantly.
“It’s as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learnt something, everybody automatically knew it. And that’s how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person.”
Hinton acknowledged that his age had played into his decision to retire, stating, “I’m 75, so it’s time to retire.” However, he also stated that he believes it is important for young people to take up the mantle and continue to develop AI in a responsible way.
Hinton’s resignation from Google highlights the growing concerns about the potential dangers of AI. His warning about the possible misuse of AI by “bad actors” is a reminder that the development of AI must be done responsibly and with caution. PC
