AI pioneers Hinton and Bengio call for more regulation in new proposal
By The Canadian Press on October 24, 2023.
TORONTO – Several Canadian pioneers in artificial intelligence have signed a new document urging governments to better manage the technology’s risks as its capabilities continue to advance. Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton are among 24 signatories of a letter warning that AI has already surpassed some human abilities because these systems can act faster, absorb more knowledge and communicate faster than humans. They warn further advances mean AI could exacerbate global inequities, facilitate automated warfare, orchestrate mass manipulation and pervasively surveil people. To keep up with the pace of AI innovations and mitigate risks, the signatories are urging governments and companies to allocate one-third of their AI research and development funding to the safe and ethical use of systems. They also want creators of AI systems to adopt safety measures that can counter their products’ dangerous capabilities and companies who make these technologies to be held liable for the harms they cause. Bengio and Hinton, who have been nicknamed the godfathers of AI since they won the A.M. Turing Award with Yann LeCun in 2018, have become increasingly concerned over the last year with the technology they pioneered. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 24, 2023. 8-7
