Geoffrey Hinton (75), a 75-year old AI pioneer who is renowned for his work, has revealed more about the reasons behind his resignation from Google. He cited concerns over the risks associated with AI advancements and chatbots such as ChatGPT.
Breitbart reported recently that Geoffrey Hinton (75), a pioneer of artificial intelligence, who is often referred to by the term “godfather” of AI, announced his resignation from Google. He cited growing concerns about the dangers and risks that could be brought on by the field’s advances.
Geoffrey Hinton is the chief scientific advisor at the Vector Institute. He spoke during the Toronto Global Forum of the International Economic Forum of the Americas, which took place in Toronto, Ontario Canada on Thursday, September 5, 2019. The Toronto Global Forum, a non-profit that fosters dialogue on national and international issues, brings together ministers, central bankers, and heads of state. Photographer: Cole Burston/Bloomberg
Hinton explained his reasons for leaving the company in a BBC News interview. Hinton has expressed regret over his contributions to AI. He called some of the risks that are associated with chatbots using AI “quite frightening.” Hinton went on to elaborate, “Right Now, they’re still not as intelligent as us as far as I know.” They may soon be. Dr. Hinton’s groundbreaking work on deep learning and neural networks has influenced many AI systems.
Hinton mentioned the possibility that chatbots could surpass the amount of data that a brain can process in an interview with BBC. He said, “Right Now, we see that things like GPT-4 surpass a human in terms of the amount general knowledge they have, and by a large margin.” It’s not quite as intelligent, but can already perform simple reasoning. I believe they will be soon.”
He described a nightmare scenario in which a dictator gave chatbots the power to set their own goals and led them on a quest to gain more power.
Hinton added: “You can imagine that, for instance, a bad actor such as Putin decides to give robots their own sub-goals.” Hinton said that AI could “create sub-goals such as ‘I want to get more power. ‘”
Hinton, despite his reservations, is still optimistic about AI’s near-term benefits and doesn’t support stopping its progress. He says that the international competition will make it hard to stop AI development. “Even if everyone in the U.S. stops developing it, China will just get a huge lead.”
Jeff Dean, Google’s Chief Scientist, responded to Hinton’s resignation by saying, “We are committed to an AI approach that is responsible.” We are constantly learning about emerging risks, while simultaneously innovating.
Hinton is one of a growing number of AI experts concerned about the pace and direction of AI developments. AI systems are continuing to progress rapidly. In an open letter, co-signed by Elon Musk and dozens of other experts, in March, Elon called for a stop to all AI developments that are more advanced than ChatGPT’s current version. The goal was to develop and implement strong safety measures.
Yoshua Benjamin, another “godfather of AI” who was awarded the Turing Award 2018 for his deep learning research along with Hinton LeCun and Yann Hinton, also signed the letter. Bengio wrote in his letter that the “unexpected acceleration of AI systems” is why “we need to step back.”
Matt Clifford of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency said in his capacity as a personal spokesperson to the BBC that Dr. Hinton’s announcement “underscores the rate at which AI abilities are accelerating.”
He said that AI technology has a lot of potential, but the world must invest urgently and heavily in AI safety.
Artificial general intelligence (AGI), as AI technology advances, presents new opportunities and challenges. AI has an impact on many aspects of society, such as video-streaming platforms and hiring practices. It also impacts insurance and medical diagnosis.
