Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, widely regarded as the godfather of AI, resigned from Google last week. After concerns raised regarding the flood of bogus information, videos, and images on the internet. As well as the risk of AI upsetting the labour market.
Dr. Hinton and two of his students at the University of Toronto created a neural net in 2012, which drove the field of AI forward.
He now regrets his contribution to the field and has left Google to speak more openly about the perils of artificial intelligence.
Dr. Hinton was hired by Google ten years ago to assist create the company’s AI technology. But he has since become increasingly concerned about the technology’s potential ramifications. He hopes that by leaving the company, he may raise awareness about the hazards of artificial intelligence and its possible impact on society.
Hinton’s research led the way for current systems like ChatGPT.
He told the New York Times that until last year he believed Google had been a “proper steward” of the technology. But that changed once Microsoft started incorporating a chatbot into its Bing search engine. And the company began becoming concerned about the risk to its search business.
Some of the dangers of AI chatbots were “quite scary”, he told the BBC. Warning they could become more intelligent than humans and could be exploited by “bad actors”.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that the kind of intelligence we’re developing is very different from the intelligence we have.”
“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.”
Hinton’s concern in the short term is something that has already become a reality. People will not be able to discern what is true any more with AI-generated photos, videos and text flooding the internet.
The recent upgrades to image generators such as Midjourney mean people can now produce photo-realistic images. One such image of Pope Frances in a Balenciaga puffer coat went viral in March.
Hinton was also concerned that AI will eventually replace jobs like paralegals, personal assistants and other “drudge work”. And potentially more in the future.
Google’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean said in a statement that Google appreciated Hinton’s contributions to the company over the past decade.