Dr. Geoffrey Hinton deserves credit to help build the basis for virtually all neural network -based generative AI we use today. You can also credit him in recent years with consistency: He still believes that the rapid expansion of AI development and use will lead to some pretty serious results.
Two years ago, in an interview with New York TimesDr. Hinton warned, “It’s hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.”
Now, in a fresh sitting, this time with CBS News, the Nobel Prize winner is rating the concern and admitting that when he figured out how to make a computer brain work more like a human brain, “he didn’t think we would come here for only 40 years,” added it “10 years ago that I didn’t think we would come here.”
Still, we are now here and throwing themselves at an ignorant future, with the pace of the AI model development, which easily transcends the pace of Moore’s law (which says the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every 18 months). Some may claim that artificial intelligence doubles in capacity every 12 months or so, and undoubtedly make significant jumps on a quarterly basis.
Of course, Dr. Hinton’s reasons for concern now diverse. Here’s one of the things he told CBS News.
1. There is a risk of 10% -20% of AIS taking over
It is, according to CBS News DR Hinton’s current assessment of AI-Versus human risk factor. It’s not that Dr. Hinton does not believe that AI -progress does not pay benefits in medicine, education and climate science; I guess the question here is, at what point is ai so intelligent that we don’t know what it thinks of or maybe planning?
Dr. Hinton did not directly address artificial general intelligence (AGI) in the interview, but it must be on his mind. Agi, which remains a somewhat amorf concept, could mean that AI machines surpass human-like intelligence and if they do, at what time does ai, as humans do, act in their own self-interest?
2. Is AI a “sweet Union” that one day could kill you?
In trying to explain his concerns, Dr. Hinton the current AI with someone who owns a tiger kid. “It’s just such a sweet tiger kid unless you can be very sure it won’t want to kill you when it’s grown up.”
The analogy makes sense when you consider how most people engage in AIS like Chatgpt, Copilot and Gemini, who use them to generate funny pictures and videos and declare, “Isn’t it sweet?” But behind all the entertainment and divisible images is a numb system that is only interested in delivering the best result as its neural network and models understand it.
3. Hackers will be more effective – banks and more may be at risk
When it comes to current AI threats, Dr. Hinton clearly them seriously. He believes AI will make hackers more effective in attacking goals such as banks, hospitals and infrastructure.
AI that can code for you and help you solve difficult problems can supercharge their efforts. DR Hinton’s answer? Risk restriction by spreading its money across three banks. Seems like good advice.
4. Authoritarian may abuse AI
Dr. Hinton is so concerned about the threatening AI threat that he told CBS News he is glad he is 77 years old, which I assume he hopes to have long gone before the worst case involving AI potentially happens.
However, I am not sure he will come out in time. We have a growing legion of authoritaries all over the world, some of whom are already using AI-Generated images to operate their propaganda.
5. Technical companies do not focus enough on AI security
Dr. Hinton claims that the big tech companies that focus on AI, namely Openai, Microsoft, Meta and Google (where Dr. Hinton, who previously worked), put too much focus on short-term profits and not enough on AI security. It is difficult to verify, and for their defense, most governments have done a bad job of enforcing any real AI regulation.
Dr. Hinton has noticed when some try to sound the alarm. He told CBS News that he was proud of his former protégé and Openai’s former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, who briefly helped remove Openai CEO Sam Altman over AI safety concerns. Altman soon returned, and SUsskever eventually went away.
As for what is coming next and what we need to do about it, Dr. Hinton not any answers. In fact, he seems almost as overwhelmed with it all as the rest of us and tells CBS News that although he does not despair, “We are at this very very special point in history, where in a relatively short time we may completely change in a change of a scale we have never seen before. It is difficult to absorb it emotionally.”
You can say that again, Dr. Hinton.
