Regarded as the godfather of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Geoffrey Hinton has chosen to walk away from Google to openly express his concerns about the threat of AI products, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and others. As the creator of the neural networks that companies use to train AI, Hinton is aware of the issues that arise from these products. Now, in an interview with The New York Times, HINTON is making his worries known to the public.
Hinton, who is a professor at the University of Toronto, began working on the foundations of the neural networks back in 1972 when he was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. Later, in the mid-80s, he was teaching AI technology as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. In an effort to distance himself from the American military’s use of AI, Hinton pursued his research in Canada.
In 2012, Hinton and his two students, Ilya Sutskever and Alex Krishevsky, developed the framework of a neural network that could analyze thousands of pictures to learn how to identify common objects. Just a few years later, Google purchased the company that the group started and Hinton dedicated himself to perfecting the AI products he’s now concerned about.
Yet, the speed of recent developments in AI has caused Hinton to feel uneasy. He believes that AI has the potential to be uncontrollable, as generative photos, videos and text generated by AI products flood the web. Without proper regulation, AI could replace humans in jobs that currently require repetitive tasks. Hinton also wondered what the implications are if AI is allowed to generate and run its own code, saying it could be a “dangerous” situation for humanity if not kept in check.
Hinton clarified on Twitter that his reason for leaving Google was not to take aim at the company he worked for over a decade but to express his concerns as openly and freely as possible. He believes Google, at least up to now, has largely acted responsibly when it comes to its AI development. Moving forward, he hopes other tech conglomerates will join the fight to keep AI from spiralling out of control.
Nevertheless, the threat posed by these AI products remain and it is uncertain how much our lives will be changed by AI. Although Hinton pioneered the foundations of AI, he is not excited about the roads this technology could take us down. As he steps away from Google, Hinton paraphrases Robert Oppenheimer when asked about his contribution to technology that could be dangerous: “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it.”
