Geoffrey Hinton, who is a Nobel-winning professor and frequently called the ‘Godfather of Artificial Intelligence’, has raised an alarm over the high advancement in the field of artificial intelligence. In an interview with Global News, Hinton noted that the AI system may one day surpass human intelligence, which will be a problem if it happens. He underlined the potential of continuing the experiences and developing new programs that would help in constructing the ways for regulating the artificial intelligence effects from a long-term perspective.
A professor at the University of Toronto in Canada, Hinton got the Nobel Prize in Physics this month in the artificial intelligence field in the machine learning of artificial neural networks along with Princeton University’s Hopfield. It has done this in subfields such as facial recognition or even language translation, both of which are widely used in many technologies.
AI: The Double-Edged Sword
Hinton noted that despite the great promise of applying AI demonstrated in several areas, including healthcare, he, personally, has radical doubts regarding the future of AI. “I’m most concerned about the long-term dangers because those are the ones that people think are maybe just science fiction,” Hinton said, pointing to the overlooked AI risks that are more about the intelligence of machines outperforming that of humans.
The greatest long-term risk is that a powerful, advanced artificial intelligence will arise and then seize the reins then we will become unnecessary. And that is somewhat worrying,” Hinton said. He stressed that, to his knowledge, no one has a clear strategy on how to eliminate this, and therefore increased focus should be allocated towards this problem. “A lot of work needs to be done on that at the moment.”
Actual Health Care Benefits versus Risk of Existential Threat
Nevertheless, Hinton focused on the positive impacts this technology could bring, including in the health sector. AI can help in early diagnosis, state patient-unique symptoms, and even improve the procedure of providing health care, together with reaching health care objectives. However, the idea of such benefits should not come at the cost of negative effects if not well-regulated and supervised.
Unpredictable Future of AI
Hinton also discussed how unpredictable the development of AI has been in the past decade. While recognizing the difference, he went further and used ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini as some of the significant models that even experts did not expect to be as powerful as they are. “No one expected that we would have language models that can answer any question you give,” Hinton said, adding how remarkably these instruments have advanced in a few years.
In the coming decade, as advanced as it is to guess where the developments in this field will take us, he quotes, “As it is when driving in heavy fog.” It is like fog with fog; you know, you can see very clearly for a certain amount of distance and then the wall kicks in, and after that, you can’t see a thing,” he said.
Previously an employee at Google, Hinton left the company to become the leader of an organization that advocates for more informed warnings regarding AI. His move demonstrates how much he thinks that the world has to get preoccupied with the issues of ethics and the meaning of AI advancement. On the one hand, everyone sees the advantages of AI; however, Hinton, noticing the fast and uncontrolled tempo of AI’s advancement, warns against undesirable consequences.
With the development of AI going forward, Hinton’s words should be taken into account, meaning that man must keep control over the destiny of technology rather than the technology controlling the destiny of mankind.
