Geoffrey Hinton, an artificial intelligence pioneer said that he has quit his role at Google where he spend more than a decade of his life and earned the most respected recognition in that field. Now he freely speaks about the risks of AI and regrets his role there, as published in the Economic Times.
At the University of Toronto in 2012, Hinton and two of his graduate students developed the technology that served as the conceptual basis for AI systems all around the world. The tech industry got the key to their future endeavours through it. Last Monday, he officially announced quitting his job and joining a growing chorus of critics he openly commented how the company is slowly moving towards danger with their aggressive campaign models to produce goods using generative AI, the technology that underpins well-known chatbots like ChatGPT. He said in an open comment that he consoles himself with the normal excuse that if he hadn’t done it, somebody else would have. During a lengthy interview, he said that it was in the dining room of his home in Toronto, a short walk from where he and his students have made the breakthrough.
His transformation from an AI pioneer to a doomsayer is a dramatic turning point for the tech sector at its most significant inflexion point in decades. The new AI systems are believed by the industrialists to be an important introduction to the web browser in the early 90s and could lead though breakthroughs in areas ranging from drug research to education. It is a fear as some industry insiders are releasing something dangerous into the wild and using generative AI as a tool for misinformation. It can be a job risk and somewhere down the line; it is going to be a big worry and risk for humanity.
Over 1k technology leaders and researchers signed an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of new systems shortly after the San Francisco startup OpenAI released a new version of ChatGPT in March, arguing that AI technologies pose grave risks to humanity and society as a whole. After this, 19 current and former leaders of the Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a 40-year-old academic society released their letter warning of AI’s risks. It included Eric Horvitz, the CEO of Microsoft, and demonstrated how the company has integrated OpenAI technology into a number of its products, including the Bing search engine.
Hinton whom people refer to as the ‘godfather of AI’ did not sign those letters. He said that he also didn’t want to publicly criticize Google or any other tech companies until he had quit the job. The company was notified last month by him about this resignation and he also talked over the phone to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google‘s parent company, Alphabet. He declined to publicly discuss the detail of his conversation with Pichai. Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist said in a statement that they remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. He also mentioned continuous learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly. The best chance is for the top scientists in the world to work together on approaches to managing the technology.
