What woke up Godfather of AI in the middle of night time, “I dreamt about…”

Nobel Prize winner and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton was woke up in the middle of the night time final yr with the shocking information that he had received the Nobel Prize in physics, a recognition he by no means anticipated for his groundbreaking work in neural networks.
“I dreamt about winning one for figuring out how the brain works. But I didn’t figure out how the brain works, but I won one anyway,” Hinton informed CBS Saturday Morning in a latest interview.
The 77-year-old researcher, usually known as the “Godfather of AI,” earned the prestigious award for his pioneering work in neural networks. His 1986 technique to foretell the subsequent phrase in a sequence grew to become the basis for in the present day’s Large Language Models (LLMs).

Geoffrey Hinton’s sees AI as a “tiger cub” which may finally kill people

Despite his contributions to the area, Hinton has change into more and more involved about AI’s speedy improvement. In his CBS interview, he warned that individuals “haven’t understood what’s coming” and in contrast humanity’s relationship with AI to elevating a tiger cub which may finally flip harmful.
“The best way to understand it emotionally is we are like somebody who has this really cute tiger cub,” Hinton defined. “Unless you can be very sure that it’s not gonna want to kill you when it’s grown up, you should worry.”
Hinton estimates a ten% to twenty% probability that synthetic intelligence will finally take management from people, echoing considerations from business leaders like Google CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. However, he criticizes these identical corporations for prioritizing income over security and lobbying in opposition to regulation.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech final December, Hinton addressed each the potential advantages and risks of AI:
“This new form of AI excels at modeling human intuition rather than human reasoning and it will enable us to create highly intelligent and knowledgeable assistants,” he mentioned. “If the benefits of the increased productivity can be shared equally it will be a wonderful advance for all humanity.”
However, he cautioned about rapid dangers like divisive echo chambers, authorities surveillance, and cyber assaults, in addition to the existential menace of creating digital beings smarter than people. “We urgently need research on how to prevent these new beings from wanting to take control,” Hinton warned. “They are no longer science fiction.”