Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Artificial Intelligence 'Godfather' on AI Possibly Wiping Out Humanity: ‘It's Not Inconceivable’

posted by hubie on Thursday March 30 2023, @01:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the EXTERMINATE dept.

fliptop writes:

Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist who has been called "the godfather of artificial intelligence", says it is "not inconceivable" that AI may develop to the point where it poses a threat to humanity:

The computer scientist sat down with CBS News this week about his predictions for the advancement of AI. He compared the invention of AI to electricity or the wheel.

Hinton, who works at Google and the University of Toronto, said that the development of general purpose AI is progressing sooner than people may imagine. General purpose AI is artificial intelligence with several intended and unintended purposes, including speech recognition, answering questions and translation.

"Until quite recently, I thought it was going to be like 20 to 50 years before we have general purpose AI. And now I think it may be 20 years or less," Hinton predicted. Asked specifically the chances of AI "wiping out humanity," Hinton said, "I think it's not inconceivable. That's all I'll say."

[...] Hinton said it was plausible for computers to eventually gain the ability to create ideas to improve themselves.

Also at CBS News. Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Previously: OpenAI's New ChatGPT Bot: 10 "Dangerous" Things it's Capable of

Original Submission

 
This discussion was created by hubie (1068) for logged-in users only, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Artificial Intelligence 'Godfather' on AI Possibly Wiping Out Humanity: ‘It's Not Inconceivable’ | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 61 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 30 2023, @05:17PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 30 2023, @05:17PM (#1298924) Journal

    The reference to 12 Monkeys was just regarding the villain. He wanted to kill everyone. The company he worked for gave him a way to do that, so he took it.

    The company he owned gave him a way to do that. Right there we have turned it from a problem that anyone can do with some equipment and an AI to tell them what to do to a very small group with very specialized knowledge.

    Stop being narrow-minded. The things we take for granted today would have been considered "magic thinking" a couple decades ago.

    Like what? Sorry, technology didn't change that much in 20 years.

    You are so stuck on what you think you know about today's technology that you aren't even willing to try to conceive of what might be possible in the future. The point of the discussion is not whether or not AI WILL kill everyone, but if it's conceivable.

    How far in the future? My take is that you are speaking of technology you don't understand. And sure, it can kill us in ways we don't yet understand. My point is that speaking of an AI capable of controlling virtually all internet-linked stuff on the planet to kill humans will take a vast amount of computing power and a very capability AI. That is the magic I believe you continue to speak of.

    We are nowhere near that, and likely to run into all sorts of knowledge, problems, and corrections/changes that will render our current musings as irrelevant.