'I'm worried': Godfather of AI who won Nobel Prize in Physics warns of technology getting out of control
A screen shows the laureats of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, US physicist John J Hopfield and Canadian-British computer scientist and cognitive psychologist Geoffrey E Hinton, during the announcement by the Royal Swedish Academy Photograph:( AFP )
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Hopfield laid the foundations for machine learning that is powering many of today's AI-based products and applications. However, he grew wary of AI's future development and cut ties with his former employer Google in order to speak more freely on the issue
Hopfield laid the foundations for machine learning that is powering many of today's AI-based products and applications. However, he grew wary of AI's future development and cut ties with his former employer Google in order to speak more freely on the issue
Geoffrey Hinton, regarded by many as the 'godfather of artificial intelligence' (AI), was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics alongside John Hopfield on Tuesday (Oct 8) by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Immediately after winning the award, Hopfield talked about the significance of the technology but also warned of it "getting out of control".
Hinton laid the foundations for machine learning that is powering many of today's AI-based products and applications. However, he grew wary of AI's future development and cut ties with his former employer Google in order to speak more freely on the issue.
“It will be comparable with the industrial revolution. But instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed people in intellectual ability. We have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us,” Hinton was quoted as saying by CNN.
“But we also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control,” he cautioned.
Hinton added, “I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control."
This is not the first instance when Hinton was warned of AI's future and its impact on humanity. Speaking at the Collision tech conference in Toronto last year, the so-called "godfather of AI" emphasised the importance of understanding how artificial intelligence might attempt to take control before it surpasses human intelligence.
"Before AI is smarter than us, I think the people developing it should be encouraged to put a lot of work into understanding how it might try and take control away."
"Right now there are 99 very smart people trying to make AI better and one very smart person trying to figure out how to stop it taking over and maybe you want to be more balanced," he added.
As per Hinton, it's not just the threat of a takeover, AI also threatens to deepen pre-existing inequalities. He argued that AI's benefits and productivity gains are likely to benefit the wealthy.
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Who is Hinton?
Born in London in 1947, Hinton is currently a professor at the University of Toronto, Canada, having earned his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1978.
Hinton improved on his colleague's Hopfield network to create a new network that uses a different method, the Boltzmann machine, for saving and recreating patterns.
Hinton used tools from statistical physics, the science of systems built from many similar components. The machine is trained by feeding it examples that are very likely to arise when the machine is run.
The Boltzmann machine can be used to classify images or create new examples of the type of pattern on which it was trained. Hinton has built upon this work, helping initiate the current explosive development of machine learning.
(With inputs from agencies)
