Fears for humanity and the dangers of artificial intelligence according to Geoffrey Hinton

Fears for humanity and the dangers of artificial intelligence according to Geoffrey Hinton

The cryptocurrency industry has been greatly influenced by advances in artificial intelligence technology. More specifically, the increasing po-polarity of AI-based chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard has spawned a subsection of cryptocurrencies dedicated to this space.

There are a variety of coins in the market that have seen exponential growth due to the rapid interest in AI.

We have also used ChatGPT on numerous topics such as:

And while it's exciting to chat with an AI about topics you'd normally discuss with your colleagues, there's another side to it, and Geoffrey Hinton speaks about it loud and clear.

The godfather of artificial intelligence

Geoffrey Hinton is a British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist born in Wimbledon, London, in 1947.

He is best known for his work on artificial neural networks and is a former employee of Google. He left the company in May 2023 in a major public exit, raising public concerns about the risks of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Technology Review via Linda Nylind / Eyevine Via Redux

Hinton is the first winner of the Rumelhart Prize in 2001 and is known internationally for his work on artificial neural networks, particularly in how they can be designed to learn without a human teacher. He also won the 2018 ACM AM Turing Award for conceptual and technical breakthroughs in the field.

He is also commonly referred to as one of the godfathers of AI. And now he has some concerns.

We've discovered the secret to immortality, but there's a catch

In an interview forThe Guardian,Hinton made it clear that he left Google on good terms and that he has no objections to what the company is doing or has done.

In the article, he compares biological intelligence (human brain) with digital intelligence and outlines the inefficiencies that humans face. He says that our brains operate at low power, but our approach is quite inefficient in terms of transmitting information. Digital intelligence, on the other hand, is different.

They pay a huge energy cost, but when one of them learns something, everyone knows it and you can easily save more copies. So the good news is that we have discovered the secret to immortality. The bad news is that it's not for us.

Essentially, Hinton concluded that humans are building intelligence that has the potential to surpass humanity.

I thought it would happen eventually, but we had a lot of time: 30 to 50 years. I don't believe that anymore. And I don’t know of any examples of more intelligent things being controlled by less intelligent things.”

To make the comparison more understandable, the computer scientist pitted us (humans) against frogs and added:

And it (AI) will learn from the internet, it will have read every single book ever written about how to manipulate people and seen it in practice too.”

Excerpt from the film Ex Machina. Movie House Memories

Fears for humanity

Citing a recent report by Hinton, reports outline the potential dangers of so-called superintelligence.

The “Godfather of AI” describes scenarios in which an AI might attempt to gain control over numerous aspects of its own environment to solve complex problems. These aspects even include human manipulation. The scientist believes that AI would not even need an explicit goal of gaining power or destruction to exploit its ability to mimic human behavior.

It's not all doom and gloom, however. He believes that there are ways to mitigate catastrophic scenarios, but also believes that we are past the point of no return and stopping AI development is simply impossible and should not be stopped.

I think we should develop it further because it could do wonderful things. But we should equally strive to mitigate or prevent the possible dire consequences.

How close are we to these dire consequences? Closer than you might think.

I have a lot of uncertainty at the moment. It's possible that large language models that have consumed all the documents on the web won't be able to make much progress unless they also get access to all of our private data. I don't want to rule out something like that - I think people who are confident in this situation are crazy.

The right way to think about the probability of a catastrophe is to simply flip coins rather than we would like.”

Final Thoughts

Artificial intelligence is likely to play an increasingly important role in our lives. According to ChatGPT itself (oh the irony) itself, some of the areas it will impact in the next 7 years are:

• Gesundheitspflege
• Automatisierung
• Transport
• Ausbildung
• Intelligente Häuser
• Kundendienst

Since voicing his concerns, Hinton has been criticized by many for not following through with some of his colleagues who had previously resigned. It is easy to reach this conclusion, but it is also easy to overlook the complexity of the problem, which touches on several technological, philosophical and ethical principles.

I guess Hinton is just saying that AI's impact on humanity, good or bad, is probably much greater than most of us seem to realize.

Featured image courtesy of CBC, provided by Geoffrey Hinton.

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