Geoffrey Hinton, a renowned AI researcher and one of the "godfathers of AI," has
resigned
from his position as a Google VP and engineering fellow to speak more openly about the potential dangers of AI.
Hinton recently spoke with the
New York Times
about his concerns regarding AI deepfakes, misinformation, and the impact on job markets.
Hinton, along with Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio, won the prestigious
Turing Award
in 2018 for their contributions to the development of deep neural networks that underlie modern AI.
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Hinton's most significant contribution to the field is the backpropagation algorithm, which he co-proposed in the 1980s with two students and serves as the foundation for most machine
learning models.
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While splitting his time between the University of Toronto and Google, Hinton has become increasingly worried about the potential risks of AI, including the possibility of machines
surpassing human intelligence, which he once believed was at least three decades away.
After leaving his part-time role at Google this month, Hinton, 75, told the NYT that he is increasingly concerned about AI's risks and has some regrets about his contributions to the field.
- "I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn't done it, somebody else would have," Hinton said.
- One concern he has is that AI could take away more than "drudge work" and eliminate more jobs than people expect.
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In the future, Hinton worries that AI technology that generates and runs its own computer code could take on unexpected behaviors, and humanity could face a new reality involving fully
autonomous weapons.
- “Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” he said. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”
