“Godfather of AI” reveals the only way for humanity to survive against super AI

(Dan Tri) - Geoffrey Hinton, known as the "godfather of AI", has expressed concern that the technology he helped build could wipe out humanity in the future.

Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist who helped lay the foundation for the development of artificial intelligence (AI), has just warned that there is a possibility that 10 to 20% of AI will wipe out humanity in the future. Hinton also doubts the ability of technology companies to control AI.

“That’s not going to work (on the ability of tech companies to control AI). They’re going to be much smarter than us. They’re going to have a lot of ways to bypass control,” Geoffrey Hinton said.

Geoffrey Hinton is known as the "Godfather of AI", the one who laid the foundation for the development of modern artificial intelligence (Photo: Pinterest).

Hinton warns that in the future, AI systems could control humans as easily as an adult can use candy to lure a 3-year-old. Hinton gives examples of AI systems already willing to deceive, cheat, and misinform to achieve their goals.

According to Hinton, instead of forcing AI to obey humans, he believes that the only solution for humanity to survive against AI is to integrate “maternal instinct” into AI models, so that they truly care about humans, even when AI has become more powerful and intelligent than the entire human intellect.

“If they become smarter than humans, AI systems will quickly develop two goals: One is to survive and the other is to find ways to gain more control. Any kind of AI will try to survive,” Geoffrey Hinton commented.

This is why it is important to integrate and nurture “maternal instincts” into AI models, he said. However, Hinton said he is not yet clear on how to do this technically, but stressed that computer scientists need to find solutions to make it happen.

Emmett Shear, who served as interim CEO at OpenAI, said he wouldn't be surprised if AI in the future becomes smarter, threatens humans, and bypasses shutdown orders.

“AI today is still relatively weak, but it has become much smarter and more powerful. It will not stop,” Emmett Shear shared.

AI is evolving faster than expected

Many technology experts believe that AI is developing faster than humanity expected and that artificial superintelligence, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), an AI system that can perform multiple tasks simultaneously, will appear in the next few years.

Geoffrey Hinton said he once thought it would take humanity 30 to 50 years to build AGI, but now he sees this moment coming sooner.

“A reasonable guess is that AGI will appear within the next five to 20 years,” Hinton commented.

While Hinton worries that there will still be mistakes made in development that could see AI spiral out of control, he hopes the technology will pave the way for breakthroughs in medicine and improve the quality of human life.

“We will find revolutionary new drugs, we will have much better cancer treatments than we have today thanks to AI. For example, AI will help doctors analyze and link huge amounts of data from CT and MRI scans,” Geoffrey Hinton commented, but he does not believe that AI cannot help humans achieve immortality.

When asked what he would have done in the past if he had known that AI would develop as rapidly as it does today, Hinton said he regrets focusing only on making AI work without paying attention to other issues.

“I wish I had thought about safety issues,” Hinton said.

Professor Geoffrey Everest Hinton was born on December 6, 1947 in London, England. He is a computer scientist, cognitive psychologist, and is known as the "Godfather of AI" for his pioneering contributions in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning.

In 2024, Professor Hinton won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his fundamental discoveries in machine learning with artificial neural networks.

Also in 2024, Professor Geoffrey Hinton, along with Professor Yoshua Bengio, Professor Yann LeCun, Professor Fei-Fei Li and CEO of chip company Nvidia Jensen Huang, were honored and received the main award at the VinFuture 2024 award ceremony, for their great contributions in the fields of deep learning and artificial intelligence.

Geoffrey Hinton, along with Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun, are considered the “godfathers of AI” for their research that laid the foundation for many important advances in the development of modern artificial intelligence.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/cong-nghe/bo-gia-ai-tiet-lo-cach-duy-nhat-de-nhan-loai-ton-tai-truoc-sieu-ai-20250819160130130.htm