Geoffrey Hinton’s name now appears alongside Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi in the select club of scientists recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The 76-year-old emeritus professor at the University of Toronto (Canada) was awarded this Tuesday along with professor at Princeton University (United States), John Hopfield, for his “fundamental discoveries and inventions that allow learning automatic with artificial neural networks. In other words, by helping computers learn.
The scientist has been nicknamed as “the godfather” of artificial intelligence” for his research on the neural network, a mathematical and computational system that learns skills through data analysis.
However, in recent times the British-Canadian professor has been warning of the risks posed to humanity by the technology that he helped develop.
Concerns that led him to leave Google in mid-2023 and that he reiterated as soon as he learned of the verdict of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Repentant
“We have no experience of what it is like to have things that are smarter than us,” Hinton declared, during remarks he offered by telephone during the Nobel press conference.
“It is going to be wonderful in many aspects, in areas such as medical care,” said the computer scientist born in London (United Kingdom).
However, he immediately indicated that “we also have to worry about a series of possible negative consequences. In particular, the threat of these things getting out of control“.
Upon resigning from Google, Hinton advocated putting a stop to the development of artificial intelligence.
“I don’t think they should expand this further until they understand if they can control it,” said the professor, who in 2018 won the Turing Awardknown as the Nobel Prize in computing.
Hinton warned that the more this technology advances, the more dangerous it will become and could even rebel against humanity, as some Hollywood films such as “Terminator” have proposed.
“Look what it was like five years ago and what it is like now,” added the graduate of the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh.
“At the moment, (artificial intelligence systems) are not smarter than us, but I think they will soon be,” he said in an interview with the BBC.
“My guess is that, within 5 or 20 years, there will be a 50% chance that we will have to face the problem of artificial intelligence trying to take control of our lives,” he warned.
Why did you promote a technology that now worries you? “I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have done it.“He said in an interview with the American newspaper The New York Times.
What is true?
The possibility that the internet will be filled with fake photos, videos and texts, and that the average user “can no longer know what is true” is the award-winner’s immediate concern.
Likewise, Hinton described as “terrifying” the dangers that could be produced by the combination of chatbots that are more intelligent than humans and “bad actors.”
“This will allow authoritarian leaders to manipulate their constituents, things like that.”he told the BBC.
Hinton assured that Google acted “very responsibly” and as a “good steward” of artificial intelligence until 2022, taking precautions not to launch products that could do harm.
However, since Microsoft expanded its Bing search engine with a chatbot, challenging Google’s core business, a race has broken out among the technology giants that “may be impossible to stop,” he warned.
Hinton assured that he did not resign from Google to be able to criticize the company, but rather to be able to express his opinions freely.
“I left so I could talk about the dangers of artificial intelligence without considering how this affects Google“he explained.
“Killer robots”
Another of Hinton’s concerns is how artificial intelligence will revolutionize the labor market. Instead of complementing humans, it could replace them in countless jobs that perform routine tasks.
“Takes away the heavy lifting,” but also “I could remove more than that”he indicated.
However, the laureate’s real fear is that technologies in the future threaten humanity and Truly autonomous weapons are developedlike “killer robots.”
Artificial intelligence systems “often learn unexpected behavior due to the large amount of data they analyze,” he explained.
“People and companies allow AI systems to not only generate their own code, but also execute that code on their own,” he continued.
“Some people believed in the idea that these things could become smarter than people. But most thought it was too far away. I thought it was very far away, that it was between 30 and 50 years away or even more. Obviously, I don’t think that anymore.”he admitted
Although this is a hypothetical threat, Hinton predicted that the competition between Google, Microsoft and others will become a global race without international regulations.
On that occasion, the scientist recalled that unlike nuclear weapons, there is no way to know if companies or countries are secretly working on artificial intelligence.
The greatest hope for Hinton, who is the 122nd Cambridge University graduate to win a Nobel Prize, is that the world’s leading scientists will collaborate to develop ways to control this technology.
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