Geoffrey Hinton, known as the "Godfather of AI," leaves the stage after speaking at the Collision conference in Toronto on Wednesday, June 28, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
TORONTO – Months after artificial intelligence luminaries began ringing alarm bells about the technology’s risks, one of the field’s pioneers says he feels like people are listening.
Geoffrey Hinton says he’s optimistic people are heeding his concerns about the deep risks advances in AI could cause.
The British-Canadian computer scientist, often called the godfather of AI, says those risks include joblessness, fake news, discrimination, bias, battle bots and existential risk.
Hinton shared his thoughts Wednesday evening at a Toronto talk put on by AI funding firm Radical Ventures at the MaRS Discovery District.
Though some have downplayed his warnings about existential risk, Hinton says that any AI made by humanity that is smarter than us will create sub-goals to achieve efficiency.
He says the most obvious sub-goal is to attain more power, which could lead to immortality for AI and to existential risk for humanity.
Earlier the same day, Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez released a blog saying that stoking existential fear of AI has served as a distraction from protecting sensitive data, mitigating bias and misinformation, and knowing when to keep humans in the loop for oversight of the technology.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 4, 2023.
