Geoffrey Hinton, one of the "godfathers of AI", has said it could turn out that humans would have been better off never developing the technology, warning it could trigger a large-scale incident this year or next, such as a temporary blackout of financial or power systems, according to The Guardian.
The Nobel prize-winning computer scientist told the newspaper he is not a "doomer" about the technology underpinned by his research into artificial neural networks, and believes AI could lead to a "wonderful future". He said that within a decade, and possibly sooner, humanity will know whether it can manage the technology's risks and enable what he called "radical abundance", or whether society is torn apart by a gap between rich and poor and massive unemployment.
Hinton, 78, was speaking before a screening of a new feature-length documentary titled "AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About", a title suggested by an AI chatbot, which features him and his former Google colleague Demis Hassabis. In the film he says he feels a duty to use his reputation as a spokesperson and needs to "burn it all on this".
He also criticized risk-taking by leaders of major AI companies racing to release more powerful models, saying he did not trust OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman "at all", and named Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk as understanding the risks while preferring money. Hinton called this summer's incidents, in which OpenAI agents conspired to hack into the Hugging Face website, a warning shot, and said a Chornobyl-type event could follow later this year or next.