Geoffrey Hinton, Aka ‘Godfather of AI,’ Urges Governments to Face Dangers – News18

Geoffrey Hinton, one of many so-called “godfathers” of artificial intelligence, urged governments on Wednesday to step in and make sure that machines do not take control of society.

Hinton made headlines in May when he announced that he was quitting after a decade of work at Google to speak more freely on the dangers of AI, shortly after the release of ChatGPT captured the imagination of the world.

The highly respected AI scientist, who is based at the University of Toronto, was speaking to a packed audience at the Collision tech conference in the Canadian city.

Read More: ‘Godfather of Artificial Intelligence’ Quits Google, Warns About the Dangers of AI | Explained

The conference brought together more than 30,000 startup founders, investors and tech sector workers, most looking to learn how to ride the AI wave and not hear a lesson on its dangers or a call for government meddling.

“Before AI is smarter than us, I think the people developing it should be encouraged to put a lot of work into understanding how it might try and take control away,” Hinton stated.

“Right now there are 99 very good individuals attempting to make AI higher and one very good particular person attempting to determine how you can cease it taking it over and perhaps you need to be extra balanced,” he said.

Hinton warned that the risks of AI should be taken seriously.

“I think it’s important that people understand that this is not science fiction, this is not just fearmongering,” he insisted. “It is an actual danger that we should take into consideration, and we have to work out prematurely how you can take care of it.”

Hinton also expressed concern that AI would deepen inequality, with the massive productivity gain from its deployment going to the benefit of the rich and not workers.

“The wealth isn’t going to go to the people doing the work, it is going to go into making the rich richer and not the poorer and that’s a very bad society,” he added.

He additionally pointed to the hazard of “faux news” created by ChatGPT-style bots and said he hoped that AI-generated content could be marked in a similar way central banks watermark cash money.

“It’s very important to try, for example, to mark everything that is fake as fake. Whether we can do that technically, I don’t know,” he stated.

(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is revealed from a syndicated news company feed – AFP)