Geoffrey Hinton is a British computer scientist known as the ‘godfather’ of artificial intelligence (AI), who was awarded the Turing Award in 2018 for his work in deep learning.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Hinton warned that the risks of AI continue to multiply, because it is advancing very quickly, “much faster” than he himself expected and that there has not been enough time to complete the investigation he believes is required.
“We’ve never had to deal with things smarter than ourselves before. And how many examples do you know of a smarter thing controlled by a less smart thing? There are very few examples“, reflects the expert.
“There is a mother and a baby. Evolution tried very hard so that the baby could control the mother, but That’s the only example I know of.“he said in the interview.
Hinton continues: “I didn’t think we would get to where we are now. I thought that at some point in the future we would get here, because the situation we are in now is that most experts in the field believe that at some point, probably within the next 20 yearswe are going to develop AIs that are smarter than people. And that’s a very scary thought.”
The teacher believes that there is between 10 and 20% chances that AI will wipe out humans within 30 years, a percentage that he himself claims has increased in recent months.
“‘In the industrial revolution, human power stopped being so relevant because the machines were simply strongerand if you wanted to dig a trench, you dug it with a machine,” he said.
“What we have now is something that is replacing human intelligence, and ordinary human intelligence will no longer be at the forefront. It will be the machines,” he said.
Asked what he thinks life will be like in 10 or 20 years, Professor Hinton said: “A lot will depend on what our political systems do with this technology.”
“My big concern right now is that we are in a situation where we have to be very careful and thoughtful when developing a potentially very dangerous technology,” he added.
“There will be many wonderful effects in healthcare and in almost all industries it will make things more efficient, but we must be very careful with its development,” he continues.
“We need regulations to prevent people use it for bad purposesand we don’t seem to have those kinds of political systems in place today,” Hinton says in the interview.
Professor Hinton says he fears AI will be bad for society if many people lose their jobs and all the benefits go to rich people. “If there is a big gap between rich and poorit is very bad for society,” he says.
“These things are smarter than us. So during the industrial revolution there was never a chance of machines replacing people simply because they were stronger. We were still in control because we had the intelligence. Now there is the threat of these things things can take control. That’s a big difference“he concludes.
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