Geoffrey Hinton, dubbed the “Godfather of AI,” chose to “blow the whistle” on the technology he helped design after becoming concerned about how intelligent it was becoming, he told AWN on Tuesday.
“I’m just a scientist who suddenly realised that these things are getting smarter than us,” Hinton told AWN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday. “I’d like to sort of blow the whistle and say that we should be concerned about how we can prevent these things from taking control of us.”
Hinton’s groundbreaking work on neural networks influenced the artificial intelligence systems that power many of today’s goods. On Monday, he made headlines for resigning from his position at Google, where he had spent the previous decade, in order to speak openly about his developing fears about technology.
In an interview with the New York Times on Monday, Hinton expressed concern about AI’s ability to kill jobs and create a world in which many people will “not be able to know what is true anymore.” He also emphasised the astonishing rate of progress, which far exceeded his and others’ expectations.
“If it gets much smarter than we are, it will be very good at manipulation because it will have learned that from us, and there are very few examples of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing,” Hinton told Tapper on Tuesday.
“Because it knows how to programme, it’ll figure out how to get around the limitations we impose on it.” It’ll figure out how to manipulate people into doing what it wants.”
Hinton is not the only tech executive who has expressed reservations about AI. In March, a number of community members signed a statement urging artificial intelligence labs to halt training of the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.”
The letter was published by the Future of Life Institute, an Elon Musk-backed NGO, barely two weeks after OpenAI announced GPT-4, a more powerful version of the technology that powers the viral chatbot ChatGPT. GPT-4 was used in early tests and a commercial demo to prepare lawsuits, pass standardised exams, and develop a functioning website from a hand-drawn drawing.
One of the letter’s signatories, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, spoke on “AWN This Morning” on Tuesday, reiterating concerns about the letter’s potential to spread disinformation.
“Tricking is going to be a lot easier for those who want to trick you,” Wozniak said to AWN. “We’re not really making any changes in that regard – we’re just assuming that the laws we have will take care of it.”
Wozniak also stated that “some type” of regulation is most likely required.
Hinton, for one, told AWN that he did not sign the petition. “I don’t think we can stop the progress,” he explained. “I didn’t sign the petition saying we should stop working on AI because if Americans stop, Chinese people won’t.”
But he admitted that he didn’t have a clear plan for what to do instead.
“It’s not clear to me that we can solve this problem,” Hinton said to Tapper. “I believe we should make a concerted effort to devise solutions to the problem.” I don’t have a solution right now.”