Hinton, known by some as the “godfather of AI,” has worked for the company for ten years. He told The New York Times that he is leaving Google in part so he can discuss the risks of AI development without it affecting Google’s work on AI.
In an interview with The New York Times, Hinton said he believes AI has the potential to dramatically change the job market and that artificial intelligences could lead to a world where we no longer know what is true and what is false. He also said that AI has developed much faster than he and others had predicted.
The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that. But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.
In the longer term, Hinton is concerned that artificial intelligences may start writing and running their own code. However, he did not specify how far into the future he sees such a scenario.
Above, you can watch an interview with Geoffrey Hinton from earlier this year on CBS.
