Move FM Global News

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California: Artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton said that after realizing computers could become smarter than people far sooner than he and other experts had expected, he resigned from Google so he could speak freely about the dangers posed by AI.

“I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google,” Hinton twitted.

In an interview with the New York Times, Hinton expressed concerns about AI’s capacity to create convincing false images and texts, which “will create a world where people will not be able to know what is true anymore.”

“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” he said.

“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people, a few people believed that. But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that,” he added.

“Google itself had acted very responsibly,” Hinton also tweeted, stressing that he did not leave the company just to criticize his former employer.

Owned by Alphabet, Google has not immediately responded to requests for comment from Reuters.

The Times reported that Google’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, has said, “We remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. We are continually learning to understand emerging risks, while also innovating boldly.”

Still, many experts are speaking up about their concerns regarding the safety of AI, with some computer scientists going as far as regretting some of their work.
The time to regulate AI is now,” said Dr Carissa Veliz, an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI.