Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called “Godfather of AI” for his pioneering work in machine learning, has blasted Donald Trump’s approach to the technology he helped create.
“The tech lobby would rather have no regulations, and it seems to have got to Trump on that. And so Trump is trying to prevent there being any regulations, which I think is crazy,” he said on State of the Union Sunday.
The 78-year-old Nobel Prize winner painted an ominous picture of what could happen if AI is allowed to develop unhindered.
“What do you think the government should do if anything, when it comes to regulation of AI, putting some sort of restrictions or some sort of oversight?” CNN host Jake Tapper asked.
Pointing out that Trump—who’s a big fan of using AI—seemed to be in support of leaving AI to do as it wants, Hinton said: “There’s many things they should do.
“The very least they could do is insist that big companies that release chatbots do significant testing to make sure those chatbots won‘t do bad things, like now, for example, encouraging children to commit suicide. Now that we know about that, companies should be required to do significant testing to make sure that won‘t happen.”
Asked why he thought tech CEOs and governments were unwilling to bring their systems to heel, Hinton suggested that money could be one of the major factors.
“Well, I don‘t really know they’re thinking,” he said, before musing: “I suspect that they think things like, ‘Well, there‘s a lot of money to be made here. We‘re not going to stop it just for a few lives.’”
“But I also think they may think there’s a lot of good to be done here. And just for a few lives, we’re not going to not do that good.”
Hinton illustrated: “For example, for driverless cars, they will kill people, but they‘ll kill far fewer people than ordinary drivers. So it’s worth it.”
The computer scientist previously worked for Google, before retiring in 2023 so that he was free to share his views of the risks of AI. Speaking to Tapper, Hinton reiterated his belief that there’s a 10 to 20 percent chance of AI taking over the world.
“It’s a very real fear of mine and a very real fear of many other people in the tech world. Elon Musk, for example, has similar beliefs,” he said.
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