Geoffrey Hinton, one of the most influential people in the world of artificial intelligence of recent times, recently deepened our perspectives and understanding on artificial intelligence. As he shared a clip of a discussion panel which featured the iconic rapper Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg displayed his astonishment on how the ChatGPT artificial intelligence software is able to hold intelligent conversations. This was when Geoffrey Hinton realized what AI is beginning to be capable of and his changing viewpoint on how AI should be approaching it.
Hinton’s sudden alarmed perspective was mainly induced by an interaction he held with a powerful AI system, the Google AI language model PaLM, similar to the model behind ChatGPT and released via API back in March. In this interaction, Hinton asked the model to explain a joke that he had made up and was surprised by its explanation. This further assured his apprehensiveness surrounding AI and led to his worries that AI advances are faster than anticipated and is of urgent requirement to control it because of its intricate dangers.
To take preventative steps for near-term dangers, a group of AI researchers signed a petition for a pause on the expansion of AI more capable than the ones unveiled so far, to which Hinton felt compelled to leave Google to raise more awareness and caution.
The importance of studying the facets and consequences of AI, as well as its desirable utilization, has consistently been growing over the past few decades. We strongly support a responsible transformation of this useful and innovative technology. Unfortunately, Geoffrey Hinton’s alarm signals stress a potential and alarming side of AI-powered applications if these are not managed with foresight and a proper sense of care.
