AI May Make It Impossible To Know The Truth, Warns Pioneer After Resigning From Google

An artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer and former Google employee, Geoffrey Hinton, has resigned from his position at the American multinational tech company, warning that as the field develops, so do the dangers therein.

Hinton, 75, said he quit his job after realising that computers could become smarter than people much sooner than he or other experts in the field anticipated.

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“I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google,” Hinton tweeted.

In an interview with the New York Times, Hinton, who is considered by many as the godfather of AI, emphasized his worries about AI’s capacity to create convincing false images and text, thereby giving life to a world where people are unable “to know what is true anymore.”

“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that the kind of intelligence we’re developing is very different from the intelligence we have.

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“We’re biological systems and these are digital systems. And 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 learnt something, everybody automatically knew it. And that’s how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person,” he explained.

Hinton however added that Google has been very responsible and he did not want to criticise the tech giant.

“I actually want to say some good things about Google. And they’re more credible if I don’t work for Google,” he said.

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