This sounds kind of scary. Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI,” is concerned that artificial intelligence has the potential to “take over.” He warns that rapidly advancing AI technologies could become superior to humans within the next five years and stresses that one of the ways AI systems might elude human control is by autonomously rewriting their own code.

Hinton, who received the Turing Award in 2018 for his pioneering work in AI and deep learning, departed from his position as a vice president and engineering fellow at Google in May to openly discuss AI’s risks, CNBC reported.

In May 2023, Hinton announced his resignation from Google to be able to “freely speak out about the risks of AI,” he said.

Hinton, the computer scientist known as a “Godfather of AI,” says artificial intelligence-enhanced machines “might take over” if humans aren’t careful.

Rapidly advancing AI technologies could gain the ability to outsmart humans “in five years’ time,” Hinton, 75, said in an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” If that happens, AI could evolve beyond humans’ ability to control it, he added.

Hinton is a British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, most noted for his work on artificial neural networks.

“One of the ways these systems might escape control is by writing their own computer code to modify themselves,” said Hinton. “And that’s something we need to seriously worry about.”

He points out that humans, including scientists who contributed to AI development, still don’t fully understand how these systems operate and evolve.

“When this learning algorithm then interacts with data, it produces complicated neural networks that are good at doing things,” he said. “But we don’t really understand exactly how they do those things.”

When Hinton noticed the proliferation of AI-boosted disinformation, fabricated images, and counterfeit videos on the Internet, he took action, the Houston Herald reported. He urged further investigation to grasp AI’s intricacies, the implementation of government oversight to control the technology, and the global prohibition of AI-driven military robots.

Geoffrey Hinton, CBS News screenshot, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/godfather-of-artificial-intelligence-weighs-in-on-the-past-and-potential-of-artificial-intelligence/