Artificial Intelligence pioneer, Geoffrey Hinton, has echoed concerns related to AI expressed by the likes of Elon Musk, saying the threat might be “more urgent” than climate change.
What Happened: During an interview with Reuters, Hinton, also known as the “Godfather Of AI,’ stated that the risks posed by AI to humanity could be more pressing than those of climate change.
Hinton recently left Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL subsidiary Google saying he wanted to talk more freely about the risks posed by the technology.
See Also: Apple’s AI Playbook: Why Tim Cook Is Not Following The Google And Microsoft Model
“I wouldn’t like to devalue climate change. I wouldn’t like to say, ‘You shouldn’t worry about climate change.’ That’s a huge risk too,” Hinton said. “But I think this might end up being more urgent.”
According to Hinton, while it’s a straightforward recommendation to halt carbon emissions to address climate change, it’s unclear what steps should be taken to address the threat posed by AI.
“I’m in the camp that thinks this is an existential risk, and it’s close enough that we ought to be working very hard right now and putting a lot of resources into figuring out what we can do about it,” he stated during the interview.
Why It’s Important: For the unversed, Twitter CEO Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak were among the over 1000 signatories of an “open letter” that called for a six-month halt in the advancements of AI systems with capabilities surpassing OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Meanwhile, the godfather of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, rubbished people’s concerns about AI taking over the world, saying something like that only happens in movies like “The Matrix.” However, he didn’t dismiss the concerns related to AI in its current state.
Read Next: Google Losing Edge In AI War? Engineer Says Open-Source, Not ChatGPT, The Real Threat
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