Top AI scientist quits Google because he has concerns about AI risk to humans, wants to sound alarm

Referred to as the 'godfather of AI', Geoffrey Hinton dedicated his life to development of artificial intelligence (AI) and had been working with Google for a decade. He, along with his two students (one of them became a chief scientist at OpenAI), developed a neural network that ultimately became the foundation of AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, new Bing and Bard.

And while a section of people believe that AI will help human beings in being more productive and efficient, there is another section that believes it will lead to humanity's destruction. And Dr Hinton belongs to the latter category. However, he couldn't really talk about the dangers of AI while being employed at Google which is why he quit his job last month.

Google and Microsoft locked in a race

AI is progressing at a rapid pace today and tech giants Google and Microsoft are in the middle of a race ever since the latter's new Bing attempted to challenge Google's dominance in the online search space. Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, said at the time of launch of the new Bing that they want the world to know that they made them (Google) 'dance' and that a healthy competition will benefit everyone.

Talking about Google and Microsoft's competition in an interview with New York Times, Geoffrey Hinton said that until last year, Google was acting like a 'proper steward' for AI technology and was not rushing in to releasing anything that might be harmful. However, after Microsoft's new Bing search engine, things changed.

Google, is now in a 'race to deploy the same kind of technology', Dr Hinton told NYT and added that the two tech giants are 'locked in a competition that might be impossible to stop'.

Talking about AI and its rapid growth, he said, "Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now, take the difference and propagate it forwards. That's scary."

AI might be a threat to humanity

A short-term concern regarding AI that Dr Hinton has is the spreading of misinformation to the extent that a layperson won't know 'what is true anymore'.

In the long run, Dr Hinton is worried that AI might affect the job market and replace some jobs like personal assistants and translators.

Moreover, he says that AI's enhanced versions might be a 'threat to humanity itself' as they have a tendency of learning 'unexpected behaviour from the vast amounts of data that they analyse'. He further talked about how this could become an issue in future as companies and individuals will not only allow AI to generate their own code, but actually run it on their own. And that, Dr Hinton told NYT, might lead to a day when 'truly autonomous weapons (like killer robots) become a reality'.

He then added that earlier, people thought that this possibility was way into the future. As for him, he thought that we would be 30 of 50 years away from that happening. However, that is not the case anymore.

Resigning from Google

Elon Musk and other tech experts signed an open letter last month, calling for a pause on the development of AI as it was a risk to society. As per a report in New York Times, Dr Hinton couldn't sign that letter as he didn't want to publically call out Google or other companies working on the technology unless he quit his job.

In April, Dr Hinton resigned from Google so that he could talk freely about how AI is a threat to the world. In an interview with the New York Times, Dr Hinton revealed that he talked to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, informing him of his resignation. However, no further details of the conversation were divulged.

Talking about his resignation on Twitter, Dr Hinton said that the decision of him leaving Google was not to criticise his former employer, but to speak freely about the dangers of AI.

He wrote, "In the NYT today, Cade Metz implies that I left Google so that I could criticize Google. Actually, I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google. Google has acted very responsibly."

Google's chief scientist, Jeff Dean also talked about the company's commitment to ensuring safety when it comes to AI. He said in a statement: "We remain committed to a responsible approach to A.I. We're continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly."