Artificial intelligence has revolutionized (and continues to revolutionize) our society. However, pioneers in this field, such as Geoffrey Hinton, are already thinking of a much darker future. The now former Google employee and holder of a Princess of Asturias award, has expressed his concern about the misuse of artificial intelligence and warns that machines could surpass human capabilities.
Geoffrey Hinton is recognized as “the godfather of AI” and has also been awarded the 2018 Turing Award for his contribution to the rise of artificial intelligence. After resigning his position at Google, the AI expert advocates focusing research on reducing the risks posed by this technology, which is constantly evolving.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Hinton mentioned that “I console myself by thinking: if I hadn’t done it, someone else would have done it […] it’s hard to see how you can prevent bad actors from using it for harmful purposes“.
The academic joined Google after the company acquired a company founded by him and two of his students (one of whom would later become one of the heads of OpenAI). Together they had developed a neural network capable of autonomously learning to identify objects such as dogs or flowers after analyzing thousands of images. This breakthrough led to the creation of tools such as the well-known ChatGPT or Google Bard.
In The New York Times interview, Hinton was satisfied with Google’s care with this technology until Microsoft introduced the new Bing. This move put Google’s core business in check and triggered a “code red” situation at the company. Hinton believes that such strong competition could become unstoppable, resulting in an Internet flooded with fake images and text.
Hinton’s position is clear here and his main goal is to combat disinformation. However, he is also concerned that artificial intelligence will eventually eliminate jobs and, at a more catastrophic extreme, humanity itself. As he makes clear in his interview, “most people thought this situation was far from reality. And so did I. I thought it was 30 to 50 years away or even more. Obviously, I don’t think that way anymore.
