Advancements in the AI Field Poses “Profound Risks to Society and Humanity”

“Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” Geoffrey Hinton, dubbed ‘the godfather of artificial intelligence (AI)’, said to a US based media.

Hinton has quit his job at Google to shed light on the dangers of technology, especially the advancements in the AI field.

Mr. Hinton who created a foundation technology for AI systems, told The New York Times that advancements made in the field posed “profound risks to society and humanity”.

“Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.” he added.

In the publication’s quotes, the AI guru said giant tech companies were spreading misinformation and risking people’s jobs trying to compete in releasing new AI technologies.

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

In 2022, Google and OpenAI — the start-up behind the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT — started building systems using much larger amounts of data than before.

“Maybe what is going on in these systems is actually a lot better than what is going on in the brain,”

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While AI has been used to support human workers, the rapid expansion of chatbots like ChatGPT could put jobs at risk.

AI “takes away the drudge work” but “might take away more than that”, he told the Times.

Hinton further said the misinformation spread by AI was a threat as the average human might now be able to know what is true and what is not.

In March, tech billionaire Elon Musk and a range of experts called for a pause in the development of AI systems to allow time to make sure they are safe.

An open letter, signed by more than 1,000 people including Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, was prompted by the release of GPT-4, a much more powerful version of the technology used by ChatGPT.