'Godfather of AI' shares 6 ways the tech might harm humans
CTV
Advancements around artificial intelligence technology are pushing the world into 'a period of huge uncertainty,' according to AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton. And as the technology becomes smarter, the 'godfather of AI' is highlighting six harms it may pose to humans.
Advancements around artificial intelligence technology are pushing the world into “a period of huge uncertainty,” according to AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton. As the technology becomes smarter, the “godfather of AI” is highlighting six harms it may pose to humans.
While speaking at this year’s Collision tech conference in Toronto on Wednesday, Hinton explained that some of the danger around using AI stems from the possibility that it may develop a desire to control others.
“We have to take seriously the possibility that if they get to be smarter than us, which seems quite likely, and they have goals of their own, which seems quite likely, they may well develop the goal of taking control,” Hinton said. “If they do that, we’re in trouble.”
The cognitive psychologist and computer scientist resigned from Google earlier this year to speak more openly about the potential dangers of AI. Hinton has been voicing his concerns for months as AI technology has become more accessible to the public through tools such as ChatGPT.
Use of the AI chatbot has exploded since it was released in November 2022. Developed by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company, the tool is capable of imitating human-like conversation in response to prompts submitted by users. As a large language model, ChatGPT digests substantial amounts of data in text form and provides responses based on the information it has ingested.
But along with raising ethical issues related to plagiarism and the disclosure of personal information, ChatGPT has also produced offensive and biased results.
Hinton took centre stage at the conference and spoke to hundreds of attendees, some of whom sat on the floor after seats quickly filled up. More than 40,000 people from around the world descended upon Toronto for this year’s Collision tech conference, and nearly every talk touched on the wide-ranging implications of AI.
