AI 'godfather' Geoffrey Hinton warns of dangers as he quits Google

A antheral wide seen arsenic the godfather of artificial quality (AI) has discontinue his job, informing astir the increasing dangers from developments successful the field.

Geoffrey Hinton, aged 75, announced his resignation from Google successful a connection to the New York Times, saying helium present regretted his work.

And successful a BBC interrogation connected Monday, helium said: "I tin present conscionable talk freely astir what I deliberation the dangers mightiness be.

"And immoderate of them are rather scary."

Dr Hinton's pioneering probe connected heavy learning and neural networks has paved the mode for existent AI systems similar ChatGPT.

But the British-Canadian cognitive scientist and machine idiosyncratic told the BBC the chatbot could soon overtake the level of accusation that a quality encephalon holds.

"Right now, what we're seeing is things similar GPT-4 eclipses a idiosyncratic successful the magnitude of wide cognition it has and it eclipses them by a agelong way. In presumption of reasoning, it's not arsenic good, but it does already bash elemental reasoning.

"And fixed the complaint of progress, we expect things to get amended rather fast. So we request to interest astir that. Right now, they're not much intelligent than us, arsenic acold arsenic I tin tell. But I deliberation they soon whitethorn be."

In the New York Times article, Dr Hinton referred to "bad actors" who would effort usage AI for "bad things".

When asked by the BBC to elaborate connected this, helium replied: "This is conscionable a benignant of worst-case scenario, benignant of a nightmare scenario.

"You tin imagine, for example, immoderate atrocious histrion similar [Russian President Vladimir] Putin decided to springiness robots the quality to make their ain sub-goals."

The idiosyncratic warned that this yet mightiness "create sub-goals similar 'I request to get much power'".

Dr Hinton besides said determination were respective different reasons to discontinue his job.

"One is, I'm 75. So it's clip to retire. Another was, I really privation to accidental immoderate bully things astir Google. And they're much credible if I don't enactment for Google."

He stressed that helium did not privation to criticise Google and that the tech elephantine had been "very responsible".