The "Godfather of Artificial Intelligence," Geoffrey Hinton, has warned of AI risks and urged governments and companies to carefully evaluate the most secure ways to develop the technology. Earlier this year, Mr. Hinton retired from Google.
In a 60-minute interview, the British cognitive psychologist and computer scientist stated, "I think in five years' time, it may well be able to reason better than us."
Mr. Hinton is famous for his contributions to the AI framework. He questioned whether we humans truly understand the technology that is advancing rapidly.
"I think we're moving into a period when for the first time ever, we have things more intelligent than us," Mr. Hinton said.
He said that it is just as challenging to understand what technology is thinking as it is to read a human mind.
"We have a very good idea sort of roughly what it's doing," he said. "But as soon as it gets really complicated, we don't actually know what's going on any more than we know what's going on in your brain."
A loss of human control over AI would be alarming says Mr. Hinton.
"We're entering a period of great uncertainty where we're dealing with things we've never done before," he said. "And normally the first time you deal with something totally novel, you get it wrong. And we can't afford to get it wrong with these things."
Mr. Hinton stressed that AI had the potential to take over humanity at some point.
"I'm not saying it will happen. If we could stop them ever wanting to, that would be great. But it's not clear we can stop them ever wanting to," Mr. Hinton said.
He believes AI will boost productivity and efficiency, but he is concerned about the possibility that too many people may lose their jobs to AI and that there may not be enough jobs for the people who lost theirs.
The time, according to him, has come for conducting research to better understand AI and for legislation to ensure the technology is utilised ethically.
(Photo: MR. Hinton - The Guardian)
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