A man who has been dubbed the “Godfather of AI” has left his role at Google so that he can speak out about the “dangers” of the technology that has taken the world by storm and that he helped create.
Geoffrey Hinton, a man who has spent years working and developing neural networks, which have since shaped modern-day artificial intelligence systems, confirmed on Monday that he left Google last week.
Hinton, 75, had been employed at Google part-time for a decade, working to develop the company’s AI systems. However, his time spent working on the systems has left him with more concerns than praise for what the technology could do, leading to his departure, which was first reported by The New York Times.
While he acted on his feelings last week, Hinton has been vocal about the advancement of AI in our society before, most notably during a 2021 commencement address at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in Mumbai.
“I believe that the rapid progress of AI is going to transform society in ways we do not fully understand, and not all of the effects are going to be good,” Hinton said.
While most people tend to joke about AI taking over, thanks to decades of films involving the topic, Hinton warned in 2021 that it was “much more terrifying than the prospect of robots taking over, which I think is a very long way off.”
During an interview with the Times this week, Hinton explained his thought process about leaving Google and how he feels about his work.
“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” Hinton told the outlet.
He explained in a tweet on Monday that he had to leave Google so that he could speak freely about the risks and impacts AI could have on society, adding that he wasn’t specifically taking aim at Google and their work.
“I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google,” Hinton tweeted. “Google has acted very responsibly.”
Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean shared a statement with CNN about Hinton’s departure, saying he made “foundational breakthroughs in AI” throughout his “decade of contributions at Google.”
Dean also expressed that Google plans to continue its approach in developing AI in a “responsible” manner.
“We’re continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly,” Dean said in his statement.
Hinton’s warnings come after a group of several prominent voices in the technology world penned a letter calling for labs to stop training their AI systems for at least six months so that the impact of the technology could be better understood. The group cited what it called “profound risks to society and humanity.”
The letter was published by the Future of Life Institute, an Elon Musk-backed nonprofit, and came just weeks after OpenAI announced its GPT-4 software was progressing.
Among the concerns that Hinton says he has, include AI-powered chatbots’ abilities to spread misinformation and displace jobs. He even says they could create a world where many won’t “be able to know what is true anymore.”
Even more concerning, Hinton says these possibilities are much closer than he once thought they were.
“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” Hinton told the Times. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”
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