In chilling new interview Brit computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton says he fears super-intelligent psycho chatbots will realise they have no ‘use’ for mankind in their society
Geoffrey Hinton is amongst AI safety campaigners worrying about the power of AI(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
The ‘Godfather of AI’ has issued a terrifying warning the tech he created will take over the world – and there is ‘no chance’ it can be stopped. In a chilling new interview Brit computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton said he fears super-intelligent psycho scumbag chatbots will realise they have no ‘use’ for mankind in their society.
Artificial intelligence – which will be far smarter than humans – will take control of the planet. It will create mass unemployment wiping out folks’ jobs en masse.
People will be cast off into a redundant universe with their purpose-free lives entirely controlled by their ‘bot masters. Geoffrey, 78, said it would be ‘logical’ to halt AI development to prevent a dystopian disaster.
People will be cast off into a redundant universe
But he said that will never happen as the world’s biggest companies are hell bent on chasing cash savings from ever more advanced AI.
He said the only ‘good news’ was robots will not ‘eat us’ because – being silicon – a diet of humans ‘wouldn’t do it much good’.
But he begged the world to develop safeguards to stop the tech turning deadly if it fell into the wrong hands.
Hinton, a cognitive scientist and psychologist whose pioneering work on artificial neural networks paved the way for thinking ‘bots, worked for Google for 10 years before quitting so he could speak out about the dangers of AI.
He begged the world to develop safeguards(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Last year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.
But he told feature-length documentary Making God about the risks of artificial general intelligence or AGI – AI with human-like cognitive abilities – that instead of worrying ‘how are we going to use this thing’ mankind should be considering what it will do to us.
Geoffrey said: “Most people are unable to comprehend the idea of things more intelligent than us.
“They always think, ‘how are we going to use this thing’.
The experts’ document urged governments to adopt a range of policies (Image: Getty Images)
“They don’t think about how it’s going to use us.
“I’m fairly confident AI will cause massive unemployment and we’re seeing that already.
“We live in a capitalist society and if some big employer like Microsoft can save on wages by replacing junior programmers with AI that’s what it’s going to do.
“In fact that’s what it’s done.
“The risk I’ve been warning about the most because most people think it’s just science fiction.
“But I want to explain to people that’s not science fiction – it’s very real – is the risk that we develop an AI much smarter than us and it would just take over.
“It won’t need us anymore.
Cutting-edge bots should be licensed, they say(Image: Getty Images)
“The good news is it won’t eat us because it’ll be made of silicon so eating us wouldn’t do it much good.
“There’s no chance that the development will be stopped.
“It might be rational to stop it but that’s not going to happen.
“So our only hope is that we can develop it and keep it safe.
“And that’s what people should be working on.”
Two years ago Hinton co-authored a policy proposal by 23 boffins slamming the continued production of more powerful AI until tech giants have worked out how to stop ‘bots wreaking havoc.
The team called for ‘utterly reckless’ companies that carry on developing ‘bots before humankind knows how to ‘make them safe’ to be held liable for any Terminator-style harm they cause.
Hinton’s co-author Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, US, said ‘sandwich shops’ face tougher regulation than tech giants.
“It’s time to get serious about advanced AI systems,” he has said.
“These are not toys.
“Increasing their capabilities before we understand how to make them safe is utterly reckless.
“There are more regulations on sandwich shops than there are on AI companies.”
The experts’ document urged governments to adopt a range of policies including allocating one-third of their AI research funding and companies a third of their resources to the safe and ethical use of systems.
Independent auditors should be allowed access to laboratories.
Cutting-edge bots should be licensed before they are built.
AI companies must adopt specific safety measures if dangerous capabilities are found in their systems.
And all tech companies must be held liable for foreseeable and preventable harm their systems cause.
Other recommendations included mandatory reporting of incidents when bots display alarming behaviour, measures to stop dangerous models from replicating themselves and giving regulators power to halt the development of dangerous systems.
The experts warned: “If we build highly advanced autonomous AI we risk creating systems that autonomously pursue undesirable goals.”