Why the ‘godfather of AI’ says Industrial Revolution-style job changes loom
Global News
In an exclusive small gathering, Geoffrey Hinton voiced his hopes and concerns about AI to Global News and warned the risks to jobs could be as great as the Industrial Revolution.
When asked about the risk artificial intelligence poses to humans, AI pioneer and Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton replies with a reference to a legendary Hollywood director and a grim joke.
“James Cameron recently said Terminator was too optimistic,” he said. “Because humans had a chance against super intelligence.”
His delivery is deadpan.
Hinton, often referred to as the “godfather of AI” for his trailblazing work on neural systems, doesn’t mince words when it comes to the seismic shift artificial intelligence has already begun ushering in, as well as the risk to humanity he says it poses.
And he does it all with his trademark dry British-Canadian humour.
Hinton and fellow AI expert Jacob Steinhardt, who has flown in from Silicon Valley for a two-part lecture series in Toronto titled AI Rising: Risk vs. Reward, are gathering with about a dozen people downtown for an intimate dinner Monday after sharing the stage.
Hinton rarely grants interviews, so this is a unique opportunity to pick the 76-year-old Nobel laureate’s brain.
When asked about the looming disruption to the labour force that AI has begun, Hinton says it’s difficult to gauge the seismic shift that is coming at this moment in time, but he likens it to the scale of disruption seen during the Industrial Revolution.
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