AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton reveals why he decided to expose the ‘dangers’ of the technology

NEW YORK (CNN) — Geoffrey Hinton, also known as the “godfather of artificial intelligence,” decided to “expose” the technology he helped create after he became concerned about how intelligent it was, he told CNN on Tuesday.

“I’m a scientist who suddenly realizes these things are getting smarter than we are,” Hinton said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday. “In a way, I want us to raise an alarm and get serious about how to control these things,” he added.

Hinton’s pioneering work in neural networks shaped the artificial intelligence systems that power many of today’s products. His name made headlines Monday for resigning from Google after a decade to speak out about his growing concerns about technology.

A Interview In this Monday’s newspaper The New York TimesHinton, who first reported his findings, said he was worried about the possibility that artificial intelligence (AI) would kill jobs and create a world where many people “can no longer know what is real.”

“If he’s more intelligent than us, he’ll be more adept at manipulation because he learned it from us, and there are very few examples of a smarter thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing,” Hinton told Topper on Tuesday. .

“It knows how to program, so it finds ways around the restrictions we put on it. It finds ways to manipulate people into doing what it wants.”

Hinton isn’t the only tech leader to raise concerns about artificial intelligence. Several community members signed a letter in March calling on AI labs to stop training the most powerful systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.”

Published letter Future of Life Company, A non-profit organization Endorsed by Elon Musk, Released two weeks after OpenAI announced GPT-4, it’s an even more powerful version of the technology that powers the viral chatbot ChatGPT. In early testing and an enterprise demo, GPT-4 was used to write requests, pass standardized tests, and create a functional website from a hand-drawn sketch.

Apple co-founder and one of the letter’s signatories, Steve Wozniak, appeared on CNN on Tuesday and echoed concerns about its potential to spread misinformation.

“It’s very easy for someone who wants to cheat you to cheat,” Wozniak said on CNN. “We haven’t really made any changes in that regard: we assume that the laws we have in place will take care of that.”

Wozniak added that “some type” of restrictions may be needed.

Hinton, for his part, told CNN he did not sign the petition. “I don’t think we can stop progress,” he said. “I’m not signing a petition saying we should stop working on AI, because if people in America stop, people in China won’t.”

But he admits there is no clear answer on what to do instead.

“It’s not clear to me that we can solve this problem,” Hinton told Tapper. “I think we need to put a lot of effort into thinking about ways to solve the problem, and I don’t have a solution right now.”