Nobel recipient Geoffrey Hinton wishes he thought of AI safety sooner

Geoffrey Hinton says he doesn’t regret the work he did that laid the foundations of artificial intelligence, but wishes he thought of safety sooner.

Geoffrey Hinton says he doesn’t regret the work he did that laid the foundations of artificial intelligence, but wishes he thought of safety sooner.

The British-Canadian computer scientist often called the godfather of AI said over the weekend that he doesn’t have any guilty regret, which he said is when someone has done something when they know they shouldn’t have at the time.

“In the same circumstances, I would do the same again,” he said of his research, which dates back to the 1980s and has formed the underpinnings of AI.

“However, I think it might have been unfortunate in that we're going to get superintelligence faster than I thought, and I wish I'd thought about safety earlier.”

Superintelligence surpasses the abilities of even the smartest humans. Hinton thinks it could arrive in the next five to 20 years and humanity may have to “worry seriously about how we stay in control.”

Hinton made his prediction during a press conference in Stockholm, where he is due to a receive the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday.

Hinton, a University of Toronto professor emeritus, and co-laureate John Hopfield, a Princeton University professor, are being given the prize because they developed some of the foundations of machine learning, a computer science that helps AI mimic how humans learn.