The British-Canadian computer scientist dubbed the ‘Godfather of AI’ has downplayed the likelihood of artificial intelligence (AI) wiping out humans over the next 30 years, warning that the technology could one day ‘take control’.
Professor Geoffrey Hinton said we need to be ‘very careful’ and ‘very thoughtful’ about the development of AI, which he said is ‘potentially very dangerous’.
He had previously said there was a 10 percent chance the technology would cause the extinction of the human race, but now predicts this figure will be “10 to 20 percent” due to the rapid pace at which AI is developing.
Professor Hinton said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘You know, we’ve never had to deal with things that are more intelligent than ourselves.’
He continued, “And how many examples do you know of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing? There are very few examples.
‘There’s a mother and a baby. Evolution has put a lot of work into allowing the baby to have control over the mother, but that’s about the only example I know of.”
Professor Hinton, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics this year, warned that AI is changing “much faster” than he expected and that there has not been enough time to complete the research he says is needed.
While his work laid the foundation for machine learning, technology that allows computers to mimic human intelligence, his recent efforts have focused on advocating for more secure AI.
Professor Geoffrey Hinton has reduced the likelihood of artificial intelligence (AI) wiping out humans over the next 30 years, warning that the technology could one day take control.
Last year, he made headlines after resigning from Google over concerns that “bad actors” would use the technology to harm others.
Reflecting on where he thought AI development would have reached when he first started this work, he said, “I didn’t think this would be where we would be today. I thought we would get here at some point in the future.
“Because the situation we’re in now is that most experts in the field think that sometime, probably within the next 20 years, we’re going to develop AIs that are smarter than humans.
“And that’s a very frightening thought.”
He added, “I like to think of it as: imagine yourself and a three-year-old: we’ll be the three-year-olds, and they’ll be the adults.”
Professor Hinton said he thinks the impact AI could have on the world will be similar to that of the Industrial Revolution.
‘During the Industrial Revolution, human power was no longer so relevant because machines were simply stronger, and if you wanted to dig a ditch, you dug it with a machine.
‘What we have now is something that replaces human intelligence, and ordinary human intelligence will no longer be leading. They will be machines,” he said.
Hinton had previously said there was a 10 percent chance that the technology would cause the extinction of the human race, but now predicts that figure will be “10 to 20 percent.”
When asked what he thinks life could be like in ten or twenty years, Prof Hinton said: ‘It will depend a lot on what our political systems do with this technology.
‘So my big concern at the moment is that we are now in a situation where we have to be very careful and thoughtful in developing a potentially very dangerous technology.
‘It will have many wonderful effects in healthcare, and in almost every sector it will make things more efficient, but we have to be very careful about its development.
“We need regulations to stop people from using it for bad things, and it doesn’t seem like we have these kinds of political systems in place right now.”
Professor Hinton said he fears AI will be bad for society if many people lose their jobs and all the benefit goes to rich people.
“If there is a big gap between rich and poor, it is very bad for society,” he said.
‘These things are more intelligent than us. So there was never any chance during the Industrial Revolution that machines would take over from humans just because they were stronger. We were still in control because we had the intelligence.
“Now there’s a threat of these things taking control. So that’s a big difference,” he added.
Hinton is considered one of the three leading pioneers of AI, alongside Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio, after the three won the Turing Award for their work in this field.