A top artificial intelligence (AI) researcher resigned from Google after expressing concern about the rapid growth of the technology. Dr. Geoffrey Hinton resigned from the tech giant despite his nickname as the “Godfather of AI.”
Dr. Hinton recently spoke about his concern about the rapid growth of AI programs, stating that he felt considerable guilt in advancing it for decades.
He said it is “hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.”
Dr. Hinton said that risks related to artificial intelligence grew as it became more powerful.
“Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” he said.
In the NYT today, Cade Metz implies that I left Google so that I could criticize Google. Actually, I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google. Google has acted very responsibly.
— Geoffrey Hinton (@geoffreyhinton) May 1, 2023
Dr. Hinton, who researched the topic since the 1970s, stated that AI will become more powerful and that negative results from its development could be unavoidable.
In particular, Dr. Hinton stated that in the near future, the internet may soon be filled with fake images and information.
His fear “is that the internet will be inundated with false photos, videos and text, and the average person will not be able to know what is true anymore.”
The former researcher said that the growth of AI could also result in a number of white-collar jobs being eliminated.
Furthermore, Dr. Hinton stated that AI may soon become smarter than humans.
“I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away,” he said. “Obviously, I no longer think that.”
Google recently unveiled its powerful Bard AI chat program. Competitor Microsoft integrated AI technology into its search engine, Bing.
Perhaps the most popular and most well-known AI program is ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI. The company recently announced a more powerful form of its chatbot, GPT-4. GPT-4 has passed the bar exam, as well as a number of other human-oriented tests.
The recent success of AI programs has accelerated as of late. A number of companies unveiled programs that create music, images and even video. Last month, an AI-generated Drake song drew millions of views prior to threats of a legal challenge.
