Geoffrey Hinton has resigned, warning of the technology’s growing dangers. (photo: Freepik)
The man known as the “godfather” of artificial intelligence (AI) has resigned, warning of the technology’s growing dangers. Jeffrey Hinton, 75, announced his departure from Google in an interview with The New York Times, saying he now regrets his job.
Some of the dangers of AI chatbots (virtual bots) are “very scary”, the cognitive psychologist and computer scientist told the BBC.
“Right now, they are no smarter than we are, as far as I know. But I think they might soon be.”
Hinton also admitted that his age played a role in his decision to leave the company. “I am 75 years old,” he said, “it’s time to retire.”
Hinton’s pioneering research on deep learning and neural networks paved the way for current AI systems such as ChatGPT.
But he told the BBC that the chatbot could soon surpass the level of information held by the human brain.
“Right now, what we’re seeing is things like GPT-4 beating someone in the amount of general knowledge they have, way ahead of them. In terms of thinking, it’s not very good, but it’s really capable of simple thinking.”
“And given the pace of development, the expectation is that it will improve quickly. So we need to be concerned about that.”
In the New York Times report, Hinton referred to “malicious people” who would try to use AI for “bad things”.
When asked by the BBC to say more about it, he replied, “It’s at worst, kind of a nightmare scenario.”
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