‘Godfather of AI’ leaves Google after 10 years to warn of danger

Jeffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI,” has a Ph.D. Forty-five years ago he was active in the field of artificial intelligence and remains one of the most respected voices in the field.

For the past ten years, Hinton has worked part-time between Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters and Toronto. However, he quit the internet giant and told The New York Times that he would warn the world about the potential threat of AI, which he said would come sooner than he previously thought.

“I thought it was 30 to 50 years away, maybe longer,” Hinton said in an article published Monday in The New York Times. “Obviously, I don’t think so anymore.”

Hinton, who has been named a 2018 Turing Award winner for Conceptual and Engineering Breakthroughs, argues against the short-term risks of AI stealing jobs and the risks of fake photos, videos, and real to average people. visible text.

In a statement to CNBC, Hinton said, “We believe the digital intelligence we are creating is very different from biological intelligence.”

Hinton mentioned the power of GPT-4, the state-of-the-art Large Language Model (LLM) from startup OpenAI, whose technology has gone viral since the chatbot ChatGPT launched late last year. He explains what is happening now:

Hinton told CNBC, “If you have 1,000 digital agents, and they’re all perfect clones with the same weights, when one agent learns how to do something, they all share weights, so they will recognize it immediately.” “Biological agents cannot do this. So a collection of identical digital agents can acquire much more knowledge than individual biological agents. I know much more than human beings.”

Hinton was sounding the alarm even before he left Google. In an interview with CBS News that aired in March, Hinton was asked what he thought “AI could wipe out humanity.” That’s all I have to say,’ he replied.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has also publicly warned about the risks of AI. He said in “60 Minutes” last month that society is unprepared for what’s to come, as Google unveils its own products, including self-learning robots and his ChatGPT rival Bard. I’m here.

But when asked if the pace of change could overtake our ability to adapt, Pichai downplayed the risks. “I don’t think so. We are kind of an infinitely adaptable species,” he said.

Over the past year, Hinton has reduced his time at Google, according to internal documents seen by CNBC. He transitioned to his 20% full time in March 2022. Later that year, he was assigned to a new team within Brain Research. His most recent position was Vice President and Fellow of Engineering, where he reported to Jeff Dean within Google Brain.

In an email to CNBC, Dean thanked Hinton for his “ten years of service at Google.”

“I miss him. I wish him all the best!” Dean wrote. “As one of the first companies to publish AI Principles, we remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. I am learning to

Hinton’s resignation is a high-profile loss for Google Brain. Google Brain is the team behind much of his AI work at Google. A few years ago, Google reportedly bought the company started by his Hinton and two of his students in 2012 for his $44 million.

His research group has made major breakthroughs in deep learning to accelerate speech recognition and object classification. Their technology will help shape new ways to use AI, such as ChatGPT and Bard.

Google has assembled teams across the company to integrate Bard’s technology and LLM into more products and services. The company said last month that it would integrate Brain with DeepMind to “significantly accelerate advances in AI.”

According to The Times, Hinton said he quit his job at Google because it allowed him to speak freely about the risks of AI. He wrote on the paper, “I console myself with the usual excuses.

Hinton murmured On Monday, he said, “I left the company so that we could talk about the dangers of AI without considering its impact on Google. Google has acted very responsibly.”