ALBAWABA - Geoffrey Hinton, the British-Canadian computer scientist and cognitive psychologist known as the Godfather of Artificial Intelligence (AI), issued a serious warning about the dangers of AI, saying that it could eventually take control away from humans.
Hinton warns about AI
The 77-year-old researcher and scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics last year for his significant work on neural networks. Notably, Hinton proposed a method in 1986 for predicting the next word in a sequence—a concept that now underpins major language models.
Previously, Hinton believed that AI was crucial for global development across diverse fields and sectors, including education, medicine, the environment, and more. However, he now warns that the dangers are growing rapidly, suggesting there is a 10–20% chance that AI could eventually take control away from humans.
"The best way to understand it emotionally is we are like somebody who has this really cute tiger cub. Unless you can be very sure that it's not gonna want to kill you when it's grown up, you should worry,” Hinton explained.
Furthermore, Hinton criticized major companies—including Google, OpenAI, and xAI—for prioritizing profits over safety when it comes to AI. He explained that these companies are continually lobbying for fewer AI regulations in order to increase their revenues over time.
