AI godfather Hinton warns of risks from concentration in few hands

Summarised from 4 outlets · Updated 5 Nov, 18:10 · Archive

Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize winner who helped pioneer artificial intelligence, has warned that humanity might have been better off never developing the technology.

Geoffrey Hinton, a 78-year-old Nobel Prize winner whose research into artificial neural networks laid the foundation for modern AI, has warned that humanity might have been better off never developing the technology. Speaking ahead of a new documentary about AI, Hinton told the Guardian he fears the technology could trigger a large-scale incident such as a temporary blackout of financial or power systems within the next year or two.

Hinton said he is not an AI pessimist, believing the technology has the potential to create a "wonderful future" and lead to what he called "radical abundance". However, he warned of an alternative scenario where "we fail to manage the risks and … have a huge gap between rich and poor, huge cultural problems, massive unemployment, just society being torn apart".

Hinton expressed particular concern about the concentration of AI development in the hands of a few American companies. He criticised the leaders of those firms, saying he did not trust Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, "at all". Speaking to City AM, he said of Altman, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg: "I wouldn't buy a used car from any of them". Hinton left Google in 2023 to speak more openly about AI safety.

Hinton took aim at the risk-taking by AI company leaders who continue to release increasingly powerful models in a race for market dominance without adequately considering the risks involved. TechRadar reports he said "it is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things". He also dismissed the effectiveness of a "kill switch" to cut countries off from AI systems they rely on, arguing that sufficiently advanced AI would be "very good at persuasion".

Hinton told the Guardian that within a decade, and possibly sooner, humanity will know whether it can successfully manage AI's risks or whether the technology tears society apart. A documentary featuring Hinton and former Google colleague Demis Hassabis, titled "AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About", is being released to explore these concerns.

How it is being reported

• Godfather of AI warns humanity: It’s all hurtling out of controlGeoffrey Hinton won a Nobel Prize. Here, he has a stark message for humans. We are about to be replaced as the 'apex intelligence' on EarthThe i Paper · 5 Nov, 18:00
• AI ‘godfather’ takes aim at Altman, Musk and Zuckerberg over ‘dangerous’ tech dominanceThe ‘godfather of AI’ has warned the UK’s growing dependence on a handful of American tech giants is “very dangerous”, taking aim at Silicon Valley’s most powerful executives and questioning whether they can be trusted to control the technology. Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist whose research helped lay the foundations for modern artificial intelligence, [...]City AM · 5 Nov, 07:55
• AI Godfather Geoffrey Hinton says we may have been 'better off' without AIHumanity could be at a crossroads between a good or bad future, and AI is the single factor.TechRadar · 4 Nov, 16:53
• AI ‘godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton says it might turn out humans would have been better off without AINobel winner who devised concept of neural network warns AI could be near to triggering major incident such as power or banking shutdown One of the “godfathers of AI”, Geoffrey Hinton, has said it could turn out that humans would have been better off never developing the technology as he warned it could trigger a large-scale incident this year or next such as a temporary blackout of financial or power systems. The Nobel prize-winning computer scientist told the Guardian he is not a “doomer” about the technology that is underpinned by his groundbreaking research into artificial neural…The Guardian · 3 Nov, 21:35

In this story: Geoffrey Hinton · Sam Altman · Elon Musk · Mark Zuckerberg · Demis Hassabis · OpenAI · Google · Meta

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