A man widely regarded as the father of artificial intelligence (AI) has resigned from his position in order to raise awareness of the mounting risks posed by the field's advancements.
Geoffrey Hinton, 75, told the New York Times in a statement that he was leaving Google and that he now regretted his work.
He described some of the risks posed by AI chatbots as "quite scary" to the BBC.
As far as I can tell, they aren't smarter than we are at the moment. But I believe they might come shortly.
In addition, Dr. Hinton acknowledged that his advanced age had influenced his choice to depart the tech behemoth, telling the BBC that "I'm 75, so it's time to retire."
Current AI systems like ChatGPT are the result of Dr. Hinton's groundbreaking work in the fields of neural networks and deep learning.
Neural networks are artificial intelligence (AI) systems that learn and process information similarly to the human brain. They allow AIs to experience learning, just like a person would. Deep learning is the term for this.
According to cognitive psychologist and computer scientist who is British and Canadian, chatbots may soon surpass the amount of knowledge that a human brain can store.
"At the moment, what we're observing is that things like GPT-4 much surpass a person in terms of its broad understanding. It's not as excellent as reasoning, but it can already make elementary arguments, he said.
We anticipate things to improve quickly given the rate of progress. Therefore, we must consider that.
Dr. Hinton discussed "bad actors" who attempted to exploit AI for "bad things" in the New York Times piece.
The man said, "This is just a kind of worst-case scenario, kind of a nightmare scenario," when the BBC pressed him for more information.
You could envision, for instance, if a terrible actor, such as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, decided to grant robots the power to set their own sub-goals.
The scientist expressed concern that this could ultimately "create sub-goals like 'I need to get more power'".
The kind of intelligence we're producing, he continued, "is completely different from the intelligence we already have.
"These are digital systems, whereas we are biological systems. The primary distinction between analog and digital systems is the abundance of copies of the same set of weights and world models.
And while each of these clones can study independently, they can quickly share their knowledge. Therefore, it is as if there were 10,000 people and once one person learned something, it was automatically known by all of them. This is how these chatbots get access to so much more knowledge than a single human.
Speaking in his own role to the BBC, Matt Clifford, the chairman of the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency, said that Dr. Hinton's statement "underlines the rate at which AI capabilities are accelerating."
There are significant benefits to this technology, but the world needs to invest promptly and massively in AI safety and control, he said.
Dr. Hinton joins an increasing number of scientists who have voiced worries about AI, including the rate at which it is evolving and its future course.
"We must step back,"
