AI Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton Warns of Existential Threat From Advanced Systems
Neural network pioneer Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google to publicly warn that rapidly advancing AI systems pose a serious existential threat to humanity. He expresses deep concern about the technology's ability to outperform humans and spread misinformation.
Geoffrey Hinton, a renowned artificial intelligence pioneer often called a godfather of AI, leaves Google to publicly warn about the existential dangers of advanced digital intelligence. The 75-year-old professor emeritus at the University of Toronto shares his growing fears that generative AI systems spread misinformation and eventually threaten humanity itself.
Hinton changes his long-held belief that computer models remain less powerful than the human brain. He now sees artificial intelligence as a relatively imminent existential threat, pointing out that large language models like GPT-4 perform commonsense reasoning and achieve feats that humans simply cannot do.
The Turing Award winner expresses deep concern about increasingly powerful machines outperforming humans in ways that do not benefit humanity. He warns about the likely inability to limit AI development, noting that it is quite conceivable that humanity is just a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence.