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AI isn’t going to go away. It’s our responsibility to create safety measures and use it constructively.
While Artificial Intelligence is taking over the world with its wide range of game-changing possibilities, experts are concerned about the "tremendous consequences" that the advance of this technology can cause. Geoffrey Hinton, considered the "Godfather of AI", resigned from his position as a top Google engineer to warn about the real dangers humanity is facing.
What are his primary concerns? Is this just fear-mongering, or something you should really be worried about?
Based on the many interviews Hinton recently gave, here the five real issues regarding AI to watch out for.
Hinton said, "The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that. But I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that."
If the IQ of AI had to be estimated, it would be 80 or 90 today, but Hinton believes it can soon reach 210, a genius level rarely reached by humans.
He clarified that “the kind of intelligence we're developing is very different from the intelligence we have. We're biological systems and these are digital systems. The big difference is that with digital systems, you have many copies of the same set of weights, the same model of the world. And all these copies can learn separately but share their knowledge instantly. So it's as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learned something, everybody automatically knew it. And that's how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person."
He also said that “it's quite conceivable that humanity is just a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence.”
“What we want is some way of making sure that even if they're smarter than us, they're going to do things that are beneficial for us," Hinton said. "But we need to try and do that in a world where there's bad actors who want to build robot soldiers that kill people."
Hinton also remarked that AI can produce reams of text automatically, creating very effective spambots. “It will allow authoritarian leaders to manipulate their electorates, things like that.”
Hinton said that even though AI it's going to cause huge increases in productivity, "My worry is for those increases in productivity are going to go to putting people out of work and making the rich richer and the poor poorer. And as you do that, as you make that gap bigger, society gets more and more violent."
Deep fake Images and even songs created by Artificial Intelligence have circulated that many believed to be authentic. This is another aspect that the Godfather of AI warns: "many will not be able to know what is true anymore".
Hinton is concerned about its potential to manipulate people by spreading misinformation. And if it gets smarter, which it will, AI could deceive people and make them believe things that aren't true. "These things will have learned from us, by reading all the novels that ever were and everything Machiavelli ever wrote, how to manipulate people," he said. "You won't realize what's going on. You'll be like a two-year old who's being asked do you want the peas or the cauliflower and doesn't realize that you don't have to have either.
"It turns out if you can manipulate people, you can invade a building in Washington without ever going there yourself."
So why don’t we just stop AI? "I think if you take the existential risk seriously, as I now do, it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further,” Hinton said. “But I think it's completely naive to think that would happen… Even if the U.S. stops developing it, the Chinese won't. They're going to be used in weapons. And just for that reason alone, governments aren't going to stop developing.”
AI isn’t going to go away. It’s our responsibility to create safety measures and use it constructively.
In Genesis, it says that God “took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” God has placed the world in the hands of mankind; we are its trustees and our job is to guard and protect it.
The Midrash, a collection of rabbinic commentary on the Bible, says, “When God created the first human being, God led him around all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said: “Look at My works! See how beautiful they are—how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it” (Midrash, Ecclesiastes, 7:13).
We can’t hand over this responsibility to AI. It’s imperative that we act now to limit the potential negative consequences and learn to harness the awesome power of AI.
