‘AI Godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton quits Google and warns of technology dangers
Geoffrey Hinton, who has been nicknamed the ‘Godfather of AI,’ has confirmed that he left his role at Google last week to speak out about the “dangers” of the technology he helped to develop.
Geoffrey Hinton worked part-time at Google for a decade on their AI development efforts. But in a tweet on Monday, Hinton wrote:
“I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google. Google has acted very responsibly."
Furthermore in an interview with The New York Times, Hinton said:
"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."
This comes after more than 1,000 tech giants, including Elon Musk, signed a letter calling for a halt to AI development at the end of April.