Geoffrey Hinton has resigned from his position at Google and warned of the dangers that AI research could bring.

Hinton has worked for Google for over a decade. He is the man behind a breakthrough in 2012 that became the basis for AIs such as ChatGPT. In a New York Times statement, he announced his resignation as a Google employee and said he regrets what he has done.

“I comfort myself with the usual excuse: If I had not done it, someone else would have,” the newspaper reported.

Hinton continued, “It’s hard to imagine how bad actors can use AI for bad things.”

Hinton’s breakthrough in AI came in 2012, when he worked with two Toronto graduate students. According to the NYT, three researchers were able to create an algorithm capable of analyzing photos and identifying common elements such as cars and dogs.

The algorithm was only a beginning of what AIs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard AI can do. Google bought the company Hinton founded around the algorithm shortly after its breakthrough for $44million.

Ilya Suksever, a graduate student who worked with Hinton on the project, is now the chief scientist at OpenAI.

Hinton said that the progress seen since 2012 was astonishing, but it is probably just the tip.

“Take a look at the state of the industry five years ago, and then compare it to where it is today,” he said. Take the differences and spread them forward. That’s scary.”

Hinton’s concerns echo those of more than 1,000 technology leaders who, earlier this year, called for a temporary halt in AI development. Hinton didn’t sign the letter then, but he says now that he didn’t want to criticize Google when he worked there. Hinton left Google in the past few months and spoke with Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google on Thursday.

“We are committed to an ethical approach to AI.” “We’re constantly learning to understand new risks, while simultaneously innovating,” Google’s Chief Scientist, Jeff Dean, said to the Times.