Godfather of AI' Quits Google, Warns of Serious Technology Dangers

A man widely considered the “godfather” of artificial intelligence (AI) says he quit his job at Google to speak freely about the dangers of the technology.

Geoffrey Hinton recently spoke to The New York Times and other press about his experiences at Google, and his wider concerns about AI development. He told the Times he left the search engine company last month after leading the Google Research team in Toronto, Canada for 10 years.

During his career, the 75-year-old Hinton has pioneered work on deep learning and neural networks. A neural network is a computer processing system built to act like the human brain. Hinton’s work helped form the base for much of the AI technology in use today.

In recent months, a number of new AI technologies have been introduced. Microsoft-backed American startup OpenAI launched its latest AI model, ChatGPT-4, in March. Other technology companies have invested in computing tools, including Google’s Bard system. Such tools are known as “chatbots.” The recently released AI tools have demonstrated the ability to perform human-like discussions and create complex documents based on short, written commands.

n March, hundreds of AI experts and industry leaders released an open letter expressing deep concerns about current AI development efforts. The letter identified a number of harms that could result from such development.

These included increases in propaganda and misinformation, the loss of millions of jobs to machines and the possibility that AI could one day take control of our civilization. The letter urges a halt to development of some kinds of AI.

Turing Prize winner Bengio, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk, leader of SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter signed the letter. The organization that released the letter, Future of Life, is financially supported by the Musk Foundation.

Musk has long warned of the possible dangers of AI. Last month, he told Fox News he planned to create his own version of some AI tools released in recent months. Musk said his new AI tool would be called TruthGPT. He described it as “truth-seeking AI” that will seek to understand humanity so it is less likely to destroy it.