A man widely seen as the godfather of artificial intelligence (AI) has quit his job, warning about the growing dangers from developments in the field.

Geoffrey Hinton, 75, announced his resignation from Google in a statement to the New York Times, saying he now regretted his work.

He told the BBC some of the dangers of AI chatbots were "quite scary".

"Right now, they're not more intelligent than us, as far as I can tell. But I think they soon may be."

Dr Hinton also accepted that his age had played into his decision to leave the tech giant, telling the BBC: "I'm 75, so it's time to retire."

Dr Hinton's pioneering research on neural networks and deep learning has paved the way for current AI systems like ChatGPT.

In artificial intelligence, neural networks are systems that are similar to the human brain in the way they learn and process information. They enable AIs to learn from experience, as a person would. This is called deep learning.

The British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist told the BBC the chatbot could soon overtake the level of information that a human brain holds.

"Right now, what we're seeing is things like GPT-4 eclipses a person in the amount of general knowledge it has and it eclipses them by a long way. In terms of reasoning, it's not as good, but it does already do simple reasoning," he said.

"And given the rate of progress, we expect things to get better quite fast. So we need to worry about that."

In the New York Times article, Dr Hinton referred to "bad actors" who would try to use AI for "bad things".

When asked by the BBC to elaborate on this, he replied: "This is just a kind of worst-case scenario, kind of a nightmare scenario.

"You can imagine, for example, some bad actor like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin decided to give robots the ability to create their own sub-goals."

The scientist warned that this eventually might "create sub-goals like 'I need to get more power'".

He added: "I've come to the conclusion that the kind of intelligence we're developing is very different from the intelligence we have.

"We're biological systems and these are digital systems. And the big difference is that with digital systems, you have many copies of the same set of weights, the same model of the world.

"And all these copies can learn separately but share their knowledge instantly. So it's as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learnt something, everybody automatically knew it. And that's how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person."

Matt Clifford, the chairman of the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency, speaking in a personal capacity, told the BBC that Dr Hinton's announcement "underlines the rate at which AI capabilities are accelerating".

"There's an enormous upside from this technology, but it's essential that the world invests heavily and urgently in AI safety and control," he said.

'Responsible approach'
Dr Hinton stressed that he did not want to criticise Google and that the tech giant had been "very responsible".

"I actually want to say some good things about Google. And they're more credible if I don't work for Google."

In a statement, Google's chief scientist Jeff Dean said: "We remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. We're continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly."


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65452940

AI will first deal with agbado miscreants because it will immediately identify them as stupid. The AI will think how can you have sense and still be following questionable characters

AI has come to stay... cheers to new dispensation

uzohrome:
AI has come to stay... cheers to new dispensation

How will it benefit you😐

Did you know??



The fuller your phone battery is by the end of the day, the better your day was.


👍

The warning is instructive and timely. There should be some controls on what level an IA robot can go. Frankenstein Monsters are possible in due course, AI Robots so advanced the creator knows next to nothing about their operations.

I did some practical tasks today and came to a conclusion that AI will destroy humanity.

AI will be the end of humans.

You heard it from me here:

HUMANS ARE GREATER THAN ANY GOD, BECAUSE THEY HAVE CREATED THE STRONGEST AND MOST INTELLIGENT FREE WILL CONCEPT - ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.


Nothing can stop AI. Very soon AI will Lord over humans.

Really scary if you can comprehend the depth of our fears 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Decent Truth

One thing I know for a fact is the amount of people AI would render jobless in the next decade would lead to a global revolution on the trend.

People will become redundant, machines will take over.

AL still better than PMB anytime any day

God bless Nigeria.

I believe Nigeria will get better soon

Technology is advancing, so am advancing with it...I will advise young ones get into crypto before it is too late...paper money will soon be a thing of d past!

Reinaldo:
AI will first deal with agbado miscreants because it will immediately identify them as stupid

😂😂😂

Wet in he still dey do for Google?

No cause for alarm.

k

AI is here to stay. Only needs concrete regulations.
He'd regret quitting rather than contributing to the betterment.

Elon is still here.

Terminator and some other movies l can't remember comes to mind

I have something to say

And that’s to Africans, black man

The day you guys dump those books you call holy books, books of lies, deception and mind control. And begin to focus on the inner self and search for answers to life problems, that’s the moment Africa will begin to see massive transformation and development and become like the white men countries or even better.

All the problems of the world have been solved already, from Ai, blockchain, medicine, poetry etc and they have been uploaded in the other dimensions. It takes an open mind, a brain that is free from religious bondage to access this information. And that’s why the cure to malaria, the invention of electricity, machines, Ai, binary codes etc were all discovered by people who opened their brains and tap into this information.
Nothing has ever and will ever be discovered in church or mosques.

AI is a threat to humanity

The job losses will be enormous.

The capability of technology will render many useless. Especially tech sector!

The new TV series "Mrs Davis" comes to mind!

Interesting and Dangerous times ahead!

Human brains would be connected to AI. Humans would lose their souls to AI. That's the scariest part they are hiding from you.

E be tinz

True: as a tech expert it could lead to increased cyber attacks, Cyber Apocalypse, Massive Job loss already IBM has announced to lay off more than 7k workers and replace them with AIs. It can also threaten the Human Race. Some of these AIs can become self aware and replicate into dangerous machines and attack Humans.

Movies like the Terminator and games like Metal gear solid comes to mind

The intelligence that will soon eclipse man's own

E fit cook food or do forex

why did he use Putin as an eexample of a bad actor? What rubbish!