Geoffery Hinton, the ‘Godfather of AI’ warns of dangers posed by AI, urges govts to stop machine takeover

The highly respected AI scientist, Geoffrey Hinton, who is often regarded as the ‘Godfather of AI’, has urged the national governments to take measures and ensure that machines do not overpower society.

Hinton, who started researching on AI more than 40 years ago, made headlines in May, this year, when he announced his departure from Google, after working there for almost a decade, to speak more freely on the dangers of AI, shortly after the release of ChatGPT, which took the world by storm.

AI might attempt to take control before it surpasses human intelligence, says Hinton

The AI scientist addressed a packed audience at the Collision tech conference in Toronto, which saw more than 30,000 startup founders, investors, and tech sector workers. Hinton mentioned, “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.”

He added, "I think it's important that people understand that this is not science fiction, this is not just fearmongering.”Hinton further opined, "It is a real risk that we must think about, and we need to figure out in advance how to deal with it." He feared that AI's benefits and productivity gains are likely to benefit the wealthy, stating, “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.”

In other words, he expressed his concerns that the risks associated with AI should not be dismissed as mere fear-mongering or science fiction. He emphasised the importance of proactively considering and preparing for the real risks that AI presents.

The AI pioneer also highlighted the problem of fake news generated by ChatGPT-style bots and suggested the possibility of marking AI-generated content as fake, similar to the lines of how central banks watermark cash money.