Geoffrey Hinton, a renowned figure in the artificial intelligence (AI) community, known as "The Godfather of AI," has left Google after a decade to raise awareness about the potential dangers of AI. Hinton, who earned his Ph.D. in AI 45 years ago, previously believed the AI threat was 30 to 50 years away or even longer but has since revised his outlook.
Hinton told The New York Times, "Obviously, I no longer think that." As a recipient of the 2018 Turing Award for his conceptual and engineering breakthroughs, Hinton expressed some regrets about his life's work, citing concerns about AI's potential impact on jobs and the spread of fake photos, videos, and text appearing genuine to the average person.
In a statement to CNBC, Hinton explained that he now believes digital intelligences are very different from biological intelligences. He referred to the capabilities of GPT-4, OpenAI's most advanced large language model (LLM), and its popular chatbot ChatGPT. Hinton told CNBC, "If I have 1,000 digital agents who are all exact clones with identical weights, whenever one agent learns how to do something, all of them immediately know it because they share weights. Biological agents cannot do this."
Before leaving Google, Hinton had already expressed concerns about AI's potential to eliminate humanity, stating, "It's not inconceivable." Google CEO Sundar Pichai has also publicly warned of AI risks, acknowledging that society is unprepared for what lies ahead.
However, Pichai appeared more optimistic when asked about the pace of change surpassing humanity's adaptability, saying, "I don't think so. We're sort of an infinitely adaptable species." Google continues to showcase its AI products, such as self-learning robots and Bard, its ChatGPT competitor.
Hinton gradually reduced his involvement at Google over the past year, according to internal documents reviewed by CNBC. In March 2022, he reduced his commitment to 20% of full-time and was later assigned to a new team within Brain Research. His most recent role was vice president and engineering fellow, reporting to Jeff Dean within Google Brain.
Dean praised Hinton's contributions to Google in an email to CNBC, stating, "I'll miss him, and I wish him well!" Despite Hinton's departure, Dean emphasized Google's commitment to a responsible approach to AI and continued innovation.
Hinton's departure marks a significant loss for Google Brain, responsible for much of the company's AI work. Google previously spent $44 million to acquire a company founded by Hinton and two of his students in 2012. Their research group made crucial advances in deep learning, leading to innovations in speech recognition and object classification, and paving the way for AI applications like ChatGPT and Bard.
Hinton told The New York Times he left Google to freely discuss AI's risks, saying, "If I hadn't done it, somebody else would have." In a tweet on Monday, he added, "I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google. Google has acted very responsibly."
