On May 1, The New York Times reported that Geoffrey Hinton, commonly known as the “Godfather of AI,” had resigned from Google. It has caught the attention of many AI experts as Mr. Hinton has devoted most of his life to the development of AI technology. His reasons for this move are based on being able to freely discuss his concerns regarding the risks of artificial intelligence.
May 1 has a special symbolism as it is known as May Day – the celebration of workers and the flowering of spring. Ironically, artificial intelligence has the potential to disrupt thousands of jobs, which is already being seen within the companies such as IBM. According to the World Economic Forum, AI alone has the potential to displace 25% of jobs within the next five years.
In a tweet, Hinton stated that he “left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google”. His main concerns lie in the ability of AI to generate human-quality content, such as images, text, and videos, which could pose a threat by spreading false and/or malicious information. He has also expressed his worry that machines in the near future may become smarter than any human, which was a prediction most experts disagreed on. Huge advancements in generative AI powered by deep learning neural networks and ChatGPT , has shifted the timeline of artificial general intelligence from a few decades to possibly even achieving it within the next 20 years.
Hinton believes that the transition period of machine becoming more intelligent than humans can be used to prepare organizations, as well as governments, to take suitable precautionary measures. For this process to be effective, it is necessary to set up a governing framework for AI advancement, tackle any risks that may arise and start to consider ways to integrate machine intelligence into the existing workforce.
The company mentioned in the article is Google, an American-based multinational tech and internet company. Founded in 1998, Google is renowned for its internet-related services and products such as the Google search engine, cloud computing, and the Android operating system. In October 2015, Google announced the creation of its parent company Alphabet which covers the multitude of products and services Google offers.
Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI,” is a British-born computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, who has made major contributions to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) both in academia and industry. He is a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, and chief scientific advisor of the Vector Institute, an independent AI research and training institute located in Toronto. Hinton is known as the pioneer of various AI systems including artificial neural networks, convolutional nets, and capsule nets. In 2017, he shared with two of the world’s leading AI researchers the Turing Award—computer science’s highest honor, commonly referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing.”
