‘Godfather of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton Doubles Down on AI’s Threat to Humanity

May 9th, 2023 2:31 PM

The “Godfather of AI” is continuing to raise the alarm about the rapidly growing threats of artificial intelligence to humanity.

Dr. Geoffrey Hinton — a former Google scientist whose research helped contribute to the spawning of infamous AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s own Bard — warned that the technology could lead to the destruction of humanity after being asked “the worst case scenario” at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital conference. Dr. Hinton abruptly quit Google last month and joined a growing number of technology experts who are warning about the dangerous implications of AI on society.

“I think it's quite conceivable that humanity is just a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence,” Hinton told Will Douglas, host and senior AI editor for MIT Technology Review. “You couldn't directly evolve digital intelligence. It requires too much energy into too much careful fabrication. You need biological intelligence to evolve so that it can create digital intelligence.”

The famed scientist directly pointed to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, one of the most popular AI chatbots, as how they can quickly copy human intelligence.

“The digital intelligence can then absorb everything people ever wrote, in a fairly slow way which is what ChatGPT has been doing, but then it can start getting direct experiences of the world and learn much faster,” Hint continued. “And it may keep us around for a while to keep the power stations running but after that maybe not.”

One of the issues of artificial intelligence, according to critics, is its ability to outlast humans, a point echoed by Hinton. 

“The good news is we figured out how to build beings that are immortal so these digital intelligences when a piece of hardware dies they don't die,” the former Google scientist added. “If you've got the weights stored in some medium and you can find another piece of hardware that can run the same instructions then you can bring it to life again.”

Dr. Hinton had previously warned in an interview with The New York Times that he exited Google to openly discuss AI’s risks Dr. Hinton and two students built a neural network in Toronto in 2012, which was then purchased by Twitter for $44 million. One of the students, Ilya Sutskever, is now OpenAI’s chief scientist and co-founder.

AI chatbots like ChatGPT have been accused of leftist bias against conservatives.

Conservatives are under attack. Contact the U.S. Commerce Department and demand that Big Tech developers of artificial intelligence technologies mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. The official comment period on AI Accountability Policy Request for Comment ends 06/12/2023, but this is just the beginning of our fight to preserve American freedom.