A computer scientist often dubbed “the godfather of artificial intelligence” has quit his job at Google to speak out about the dangers of the technology, US media reported.
Geoffrey Hinton, who developed the underlying technology for AI systems, told the New York Times that advances in this field pose “profound risks to society and humanity”.
“Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now. Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary,” he was quoted as saying in the piece, which was published today, reports RTE.
Mr Hinton said competition between tech giants is forcing companies to bring new AI technologies to market at dangerous speeds, putting jobs at risk and spreading misinformation.
“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” he told the Times, reports RTE.
In 2022, Google and OpenAI — the startup behind the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT — began building systems that use much larger amounts of data than before.
Mr Hinton told the Times that he believed these systems in some ways surpassed human intelligence because of the amount of data they analyzed.
“Maybe what is going on in these systems is actually a lot better than what is going on in the brain,” he told the paper, reports RTE.
While AI has been used to support human workers, the rapid spread of chatbots like ChatGPT could put jobs at risk.
AI “takes away the drudge work” but “might take away more than that,” he told the Times, reports RTE.
The scientist also warned of the possible spread of misinformation by AI, telling the Times that the average person would “not be able to know what is true anymore”, reports RTE.
Mr Hinton announced his resignation to Google last month, the Times reported.
Jeff Dean, chief scientist for Google AI, thanked Mr Hinton in a statement to US media.
“As one of the first companies to publish AI Principles, we remain committed to a responsible approach to AI,” the statement added, reports RTE.
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