CHICAGO (NewsNation) — The man deemed the “Godfather of AI” has quit his job at Google, joining the growing list of artificial intelligence critics claiming tech companies are heading toward danger with the evolving technology, according to a report by The New York Times.
Artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, 75, notified the search engine giant of his resignation last month, expressing regret about his life’s work, the report said.
Over his decades-long career, Hinton’s pioneering work on deep learning and neural networks helped lay the foundation for much of the AI technology we see today.
There has been a spasm of AI introductions in recent months. San Francisco-based startup OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed company behind ChatGPT, rolled out its latest artificial intelligence model, GPT-4, in March. Other tech giants have invested in competing tools — including Google’s “Bard.”
Some of the dangers of AI chatbots are “quite scary,” Hinton told the BBC. “Right now, they’re not more intelligent than us, as far as I can tell. But I think they soon may be.”
In 2012, Hinton and two of his students created the foundation for AI systems. The system could analyze data within seconds and “teach itself to identify common objects,” the report said.
Many tech industries, including Google, believed the network system was the key to the future of technology.
Hinton began working for Google more than a decade ago after the company acquired his and his students’ tech company for $44 million.
However, his biggest fears about the speed and abilities of what AI can and will be able to do in the future have influenced him to step down from his position.
He fears that AI will flood the internet with false information, making it harder for people to understand what is real or fake. According to the report, he even feared that the new technology will one day upend the job market.
However, his biggest fear is that AI technology will eventually pose a threat to humanity due to potential unexpected behavior learned from all the data analyzed, the report said. He fears that AI will take over completely, taking control of running the code itself rather than just creating or generating the code.
Common fears are shared with officials in the Pentagon, who are currently looking for solutions to utilize AI without losing control and ensuring human control over the technology.
Hinton has shared his fears with The New York Times, telling them he originally thought AI could not become smart than humans, but now, he no longer believes that.
“I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that,” Hinton told The New York Times.
He now believes AI will become smarter than humans, sooner than people believe is possible.
In an interview with MIT Technology Review, Hinton also pointed to “bad actors” who may use AI in ways that could have detrimental impacts on society — such as manipulating elections or instigating violence.
“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” Hinton told The New York Times.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.