Geoffrey Hinton, founder of the current Google AI programme, having sold Google a 2-month-old startup for $44 million, quit in April “so he could speak freely about the dangers of the technology he has helped push forward for decades”. Hinton was also closely connected with the team at Open AI having taught Ilya Sutskever who co-founded OpenAI.
In the near term, concerns over fake photos, videos and texts online are cited, as well as pending job losses to AI. New AI systems have already superceded the human capability of translators, something that CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman and other AI lead actors have warned about. HInton is also concerned about rogue AI machines taken over by bad actors and Rogue AI developing unexpected or unplanned behaviours.
It is common ground amongst AI specialists that the corporate race to build up AI technology is now impossible to stop because of the enormous shareholder returns and profits available with groundbreaking AI, leading to him received the Turing Award, alongside two other AI collaborators, in 2018.
Hinton’s and two of his students, Sutskever and Alex Krishevsky, invented a mathematical system mimicking brain neurons identifying almost all images correctly and implementing neural networks which are now the core technology for chatbots, self-driving cars, facial recognition software and most AI breakthroughs as well as the increasingly addictive social media algorithms.
We all knew that AI could actually get smarter than people, but most people, including me, thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away…we were wrong. I no longer think that.”
This mirrors the belief that some companies are already be working on systems they know could be dangerous systems, and having identified the risk are continuing in secret because of the vast profits available.
Recently it has leaked from Google employees that technology could be dangerous because Google isn’t prioritizing AI ethics and taking corners to catch up to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Google states that it will “remain committed to a responsible approach to AI”.
Within 2 years, a recent Goldman Sachs released a report that estimated that 300M full-time jobs will be impacted including lawyers, software engineers and administrative workers.