Google AI pioneer says he quit to speak freely about technology's 'dangers'
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Transcript
00:00 It's technology that could be superior to the human brain.
00:04 And one of its pioneers now says part of him regrets his role in creating it.
00:09 75-year-old computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton says he quit his job at Google so he can independently
00:15 share his concerns about AI technology, which include fears over disinformation and stealing
00:21 human jobs, but also go far beyond that.
00:25 What do we do to mitigate the long-term risks of things more intelligent than us taking
00:32 control?
00:33 Things like GPT-4 eclipses a person in the amount of general knowledge it has and eclipses
00:40 them by a long way.
00:42 In terms of reasoning, it's not as good, but it does already do simple reasoning.
00:47 And given the rate of progress, we expect things to get better quite fast.
00:52 So we need to worry about that.
00:55 It's just the latest warning that tech companies might be creating a monster they can't control.
01:00 In March, after OpenAI released the latest model of its chatbot, GPT-4, more than a thousand
01:06 people from the tech industry, including billionaire Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak,
01:12 signed a letter calling for a pause on AI development while the risks are properly studied.
01:17 AI is a tool.
01:20 Technology is not neutral, but we can shape it the way we want to shape it.
01:23 You just have to stop being driven by profit, by competition, by those questions, and just
01:29 place the construction of the tool in service of something bigger.
01:33 And this is where regulators have a role to play, but it's not going to be easy.
01:38 While organizations like the OECD have issued guidelines, little AI regulation exists.
01:44 The U.S. just launched a study of possible accountability measures in April, and the
01:49 European Union has put forward an artificial intelligence act, but the far-reaching legislation
01:54 has yet to be passed.