{"id":268407,"date":"2023-05-03T06:57:09","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T06:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=268407"},"modified":"2023-05-05T06:22:40","modified_gmt":"2023-05-05T06:22:40","slug":"godfather-of-ai-geoffrey-hinton-quits-google-and-warns-over-dangers-of-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=268407","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Godfather of AI\u2019 Geoffrey Hinton quits Google and warns over dangers of misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Josh Taylor and Alex Hern \u2013 The Guardian May 2, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The man often touted as the godfather of AI has quit Google<\/a>, citing concerns over the flood of misinformation, the possibility for AI to upend the job market, and the \u201cexistential risk\u201d posed by the creation of a true digital intelligence.<\/p>\n

Dr Geoffrey Hinton, who with two of his students at the University of Toronto built a neural net in 2012, quit Google this week, as first reported by the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hinton, 75, said he quit to speak freely about the dangers of AI, and in part regrets his contribution to the field. He was brought on by Google a decade ago<\/a> to help develop the company\u2019s AI technology, and the approach he pioneered led the way for current systems such as ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

He told the New York Times that until last year he believed Google had been a \u201cproper steward\u201d of the technology, but that changed once Microsoft started incorporating a chatbot into its Bing search engine, and the company began becoming concerned about the risk to its search business.<\/p>\n

Some of the dangers of AI chatbots were \u201cquite scary\u201d, he told the BBC<\/a>, warning they could become more intelligent than humans and could be exploited by \u201cbad actors\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s able to produce lots of text automatically so you can get lots of very effective spambots. It will allow authoritarian leaders to manipulate their electorates, things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, he added, he was also concerned about the \u201cexistential risk of what happens when these things get more intelligent than us.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve come to the conclusion that the kind of intelligence we\u2019re developing is very different from the intelligence we have,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it\u2019s as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learned something, everybody automatically knew it. And that\u2019s how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is not alone in the upper echelons of AI research<\/a> in fearing that the technology could pose serious harm to humanity. Last month, Elon Musk said he had fallen out with the Google co-founder Larry Page<\/a> because Page was \u201cnot taking AI safety seriously enough\u201d. Musk told Fox News that Page wanted \u201cdigital superintelligence, basically a digital god, if you will, as soon as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n

Val\u00e9rie Pisano, the chief executive of Mila \u2013 the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute \u2013 said the slapdash approach to safety in AI systems would not be tolerated in any other field. \u201cThe technology is put out there, and as the system interacts with humankind, its developers wait to see what happens and make adjustments based on that. We would never, as a collective, accept this kind of mindset in any other industrial field. There\u2019s something about tech and social media where we\u2019re like: \u2018Yeah, sure, we\u2019ll figure it out later,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Hinton\u2019s concern in the short term is something that has already become a reality \u2013 people will not be able to discern what is true any more with AI-generated photos, videos and text flooding the internet.<\/p>\n

The recent upgrades to image generators such as Midjourney mean people can now produce photo-realistic images \u2013 one such image of Pope Francis in a Balenciaga puffer coat went viral in March<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hinton was also concerned that AI will eventually replace jobs like paralegals, personal assistants and other \u201cdrudge work\u201d, and potentially more in the future.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, said in a statement that Google appreciated Hinton\u2019s contributions to the company over the past decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve deeply enjoyed our many conversations over the years. I\u2019ll miss him, and I wish him well!<\/p>\n

\u201cAs one of the first companies to publish AI Principles, we remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. We\u2019re continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly.\u201dToby Walsh, the chief scientist at the University of New South Wales AI Institute, said people should be questioning any online media they see now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to any digital data you see \u2013 audio or video \u2013 you have to entertain the idea that someone has spoofed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Intentionally or not, the Guardian headline is misleading. Because the scientist who helped pioneer the current AI systems, has quite Google and warned about the \u201cexistential risk\u201d posed by Artificial Intelligence <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Fringe_Science_New_Discoveries_and_Developments"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=268407"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":268443,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268407\/revisions\/268443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=268407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=268407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=268407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}