What Really Made Geoffrey Hinton Into an AI Doomer
Geoffrey Hinton, perhaps the most important person in the recent history of artificial intelligence, recently sent me a video of Snoop Dogg. In the clip of a discussion panel, the rapper expresses profane amazement at how artificial intelligence software, such as ChatGPT, can now hold a coherent and meaningful conversation.
“Then I heard the old dude that created AI saying, ‘This is not safe ’cause the AIs got their own mind and these motherfuckers gonna start doing their own shit,’” Snoop says. “And I’m like, ‘Is we in a fucking movie right now or what?’” The “old dude” is, of course, Hinton. He didn’t create AI exactly, but has played a major role in developing the artificial neural network foundations of today’s most powerful AI programs, including ChatGPT, the chatbot that has sparked widespread debate about how rapidly machine intelligence is progressing.
“Snoop gets it,” Hinton tells me over Zoom from his home in London. The researcher recently left Google so that he could more freely call attention to the risks posed by intelligent machines. Hinton says AI is advancing more quickly than he and other experts expected, meaning there is an urgent need to ensure that humanity can contain and manage it. He is most concerned about near-term risks such as more sophisticated, AI-generated disinformation campaigns, but he also believes the long-term problems could be so serious that we need to start worrying about them now.
