Hinton reiterates his concern about the repercussions of the technology he created
Stockholm. In the context of the announcement of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, Geoffrey E. Hinton, who was awarded along with John J. Hopfield, reiterated his concern about the possible repercussions of the artificial intelligence technology, which he helped to generate.
Hinton, considered one of the fathers of artificial intelligence, attracted attention in 2023, when he resigned from his job at Google to warn about the profound risks for society and humanity
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Asked in the context of the Nobel Prize about what should be done to dispel fears about what technology can contribute, the scientist said that he does not have a simple recipe. As for these things getting out of control and taking over, I think we’re at a bifurcation point in history where we have to figure out if there’s a way to deal with that threat.
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He considered it relevant that efforts be dedicated to investigating how we are going to maintain control: I think one thing governments can do is force large companies to invest many more resources in studying security, so that, for example, companies like OpenAI cannot relegate security research.
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Regarding whether we are in a situation very similar to the biotechnology revolution (1975), when experts met to address the risks, ethical and safety implications related to the newly discovered recombinant DNA technology, which allowed altering the genetic material of living organisms, the winner stated:
There are similarities with that and I think what they did was very good; Unfortunately, there are many more practical applications for artificial intelligence than in the case of cloning, which biologists were trying to keep under control at the time. I think in this case it will be much more difficult.
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In relation to the large linguistic models of artificial intelligence, according to an interview published on the official Nobel website, he stated: There’s a whole Noam Chomsky school that thinks it’s complete nonsense to say that these things understand, that they don’t process language the same way we do.
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