AI threat 'more urgent' than climate change, says godfather of AI Geoffrey Hinton

Artificial intelligence (AI) could pose a greater threat to humanity than climate change, according to Geoffrey Hinton, one of the "godfathers of AI". In an interview with Reuters, Hinton expressed concern about the possible risks associated with machines achieving greater intelligence than humans and taking control of the planet. Hinton's work is considered essential to the development of modern AI systems, and he was awarded the Turing Award in 2018 for his research breakthroughs.

Hinton recently left his position at Alphabet, Google's parent company, in order to speak out on the risks of the technology without it affecting his former employer. He is now among a growing number of tech leaders publicly espousing concern about the possible threat posed by AI. Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, and Emad Mostaque, CEO of Stability AI, among others, have signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI's recently-launched GPT-4.

However, Hinton disagreed with pausing research, saying that it is "utterly unrealistic". He believes that AI is an existential risk and that we ought to be working very hard right now to figure out what we can do about it. Hinton argues that the best understanding of AI lies with the tech leaders, but politicians need to be involved because it affects us all.

"I wouldn't like to devalue climate change. I wouldn't like to say, 'You shouldn't worry about climate change.' That's a huge risk too. But I think this might end up being more urgent," Hinton told Reuters.

In response to the open letter, the European Union's committee of lawmakers called on US President Joe Biden to convene a global summit on the future direction of the technology. Last week, the committee agreed on a landmark set of proposals targeting generative AI, which would force companies like OpenAI to disclose any copyrighted material used to train their models.

Hinton acknowledged that while climate change is a huge risk, it is relatively easy to recommend what to do: stop burning carbon. With AI, however, it is not at all clear what to do. He believes that this might end up being more urgent than climate change.

In April, Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot that soon became the fastest-growing app in history, reaching 100 million monthly users in two months.

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