The man who helped drive existing advances in AI needs governments, businesses, and developers to think conscientiously about tactics to move generation forward safely.
Geoffrey Hinton, dubbed the “godfather of artificial intelligence,” retired from Google earlier this year.
Hinton believes that AI has prospects for intelligence and evil. He said now is the time to conduct experiments to understand AI and pass laws so that the generation is used ethically.
“It could be that we look back and see this as kind of a tipping point where humanity had to make the decision whether or not to expand those things further and what to do with themselves if they did,” Hinton said. I don’t know. I think my main message is that there’s an enormous amount of uncertainty about what’s going to happen next. These other people understand. And because they understand, we want to think seriously about what’s going to happen next. . And we just don’t know. “
AI has the potential to one day take over from humanity, Hinton warned.
“I’m not saying it’s going to happen,” he said. If only we could stop them from doing it, that would be great, but it’s not transparent that we can stop them from doing it. “
Right now, Hinton believes that AI is intelligent and that systems can understand and explain why, but not as well as humans. Five years from now, Hinton believes there’s a good chance that AI models like ChatGPT will explain why more than people.
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT, warned at a Senate hearing in May that AI generation could “go absolutely wrong. “He said he wanted to work with the government to prevent that from happening.
Hinton believes that AI will lead to greater productivity and efficiency, but he worries about the potential threat of many other people losing their jobs due to synthetic intelligence and that there may not be enough jobs to upgrade the ones that are lost.
Hinton is also concerned about AI-driven fake news, how biased AI can harm task seekers, law enforcement’s use of technology, and autonomous robots on the battlefield.
“There’s definitely a lot of respect and a little bit of fear, because it’s more to be careful with things like this,” Hinton said.
Hinton said he believes AI systems will have self-awareness and awareness.
“I think we’re entering an era where, for the first time, we may have smarter things than we are,” he said.
It’s possible that AI is already better at learning than the human mind, Hinton said. Currently, the largest chatbots have around a trillion connections, however, the human brain has around a hundred trillion.
“And yet, in the trillions of connections in a chatbot, it knows a lot more than you do in your 100 trillion connections, suggesting that it has a much better way of introducing wisdom into those connections,” Hinton said.
Artificial intelligence systems are already writing code for PCs.
“One of the tactics that those systems can avoid is to write their own computer code to modify themselves,” Hinton said. “And that’s something we want to be serious about. “
Given his fears about the potential dangers of AI, it would be easy to assume that Hinton regrets putting generation into action, but he told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that he has no regrets, in part because of AI’s huge positive potential.
“So one apparent area where there are huge benefits is fitness care,” he said. “AI is already comparable to radiologists in understanding what’s going on in medical imaging. It will be very effective in the design of medicines. She is already designing medicines. So that’s an area where it’s going to be almost entirely beneficial. I love this area. “
In an April interview with 60 Minutes, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company publishes its AI advancements responsibly. He said the company wants to temporarily adapt and come up with regulations for AI in the economy, as well as legislation to punish abuses.
“That’s why I think the progression of this task should only include engineers, but also social scientists, ethicists, philosophers, etc. ,” Pichai told 60 Minutes. “And I think we have to be very thoughtful. And I think those are all things that society wants to perceive as we move forward. It’s up to a company to decide. “
Hinton told Pelley that he wasn’t sure there was a way forward that would ensure the protection of humanity.
“We’re entering an era of wonderful uncertainty, where we’re facing things we’ve never faced before,” Hinton said. “And usually, the first time you’re faced with something completely new, you get it wrong. And we can’t do badly with that kind of thing. “