A resignation that sounds like a warning shot.
Considered one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence (AI), Geoffrey Hinton decided to leave his post at Google in order to warn about the dangers of artificial intelligence.
"
I left so I could talk about the dangers of AI without worrying about the possible impact on Google
," he said in a tweet posted on Monday, after news of his departure was announced in The New York Times.
In an interview with the American daily, Geoffrey Hinton expressed concern about the ability of AI to create convincing fake images and fake text, creating a world where people "will no longer be able to know
what is true
”.
For this eminent specialist, advances in this sector lead to “
profound risks for society and humanity
”.
However, the latter had created a foundation dedicated to AI systems, and was one of the thinking heads of Google Brain, Google's deep learning program.
"
Look at where we were five years ago and the current situation
", he continues, judging "
frightening
" the prospects for the future by making projections on the basis of the progress of recent years.
" It's hard to see how to avoid bad actors using it for bad things,
"
he said .
The rapid deployment of an increasingly "
general
" artificial intelligence, endowed with human cognitive capacities and therefore likely to upset many professions, was symbolized by the launch in March by OpenAI of GPT-4, a new version powerful natural language model that operates ChatGPT.
Technology could quickly replace workers and become a bigger hazard as it learns new behaviors.
“
The idea that this hardware could become smarter than people, a few people believed in it
,” he told The New York Times.
"
But most people thought that was a mistake.
And I thought that was far from the case.
I thought it was in 30 or 50 years, or even more.
Of course, I don't think so anymore
."
Read also Will artificial intelligence really eliminate 300 million jobs?
The expert informed Google of his resignation last month, according to the newspaper.
In the tweet confirming his departure, he refutes any desire to criticize the tech giant for this decision.
"
Google behaved very responsibly
," he wrote.
In March, billionaire Elon Musk - one of the founders of OpenAI, whose board he later quit - and hundreds of global experts called for a six-month break from research into AIs more powerful than GPT- 4, referring to “
major risks for humanity
”.
Geoffrey Hinton was not one of the signatories, but he told the New York Times that scientists should not ramp up these AIs "
until they know
".
In 2019, Geoffrey Hinton received, along with two other artificial intelligence specialists, the Turing Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel for computer scientists.
