AI ‘godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton warns of its risks and quits Google

‘It’s able to produce lots of text automatically so you can get lots of very effective spambots. It will allow authoritarian leaders to manipulate their electorates, things like that.’ 

Arguably more concerning, however, is the ‘risk of what happens when these things get more intelligent than us,’ which he believes is inevitable. 

‘I’ve come to the conclusion that the kind of intelligence we’re developing is very different from the intelligence we have,’ he said. ‘So, it’s as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learned something, everybody automatically knew it. And that’s how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person.’ 

Within the upper echelons of AI research, it isn’t just Hinton positing that the technology could eventually pose harm to humanity. Elon Musk reportedly fell out with Google co-chief Larry Page just last month as he was ‘not taking AI safety seriously enough.’ 

The Twitter boss told Fox News that Page wanted to create ‘digital superintelligence’ akin to that of a ‘digital God.’ 

Elsewhere, Valeria Pisano of the Quebec AI Institute shared Hinton’s sentiment that the off-the-cuff approach to development in AI systems would not be tolerated anywhere else. 

‘The technology is put out there, and as the system interacts with humankind, its developers wait to see what happens and make adjustments based on that. We would never, as a collective, accept this kind of mindset in any other industrial field,’ she said. 

Whether you believe the concern around AI’s future is alarmist or not, there’s credence to the argument that not only are we handing AI the wheel, but we’re also potentially allowing it to choose its own path.