‘Godfather of AI’ & Nobel Laureate quits Google while warning about risks of AI

Geoffrey Hinton, (Image credit : University of Toronto) Geoffrey Hinton, who shared the 2018 Turing Award with two other so-called "Godfathers of AI" for his groundbreaking work that sparked the present artificial intelligence boom, admits that he now has mixed feelings about his life's work. According to a 75-year-old interview with Hinton published in The New York Times, Hinton recently left his position at Google so that he could talk openly about the dangers of AI. According to the NYT, Hinton spoke with CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday after giving Google notice of his resignation last month. No specifics of that conversation were made public. The lifelong scholar joined Google after the search giant bought out the business founded by Hinton, two of his students, and one of them who later rose to the position of top scientist at OpenAI. After studying tens of thousands of images, Hinton and his students created a neural network that taught itself to recognize familiar items like dogs, kittens, and flowers. These efforts were ultimately responsible for the development of ChatGPT and Google Bard. [caption id="attachment_167846" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image credit : The World Economic Forum[/caption]   Until Microsoft introduced the new OpenAI-infused Bing, which posed a threat to Google's core business and prompted a "code red" response within the search giant, Hinton, according to the NYT interview, was pleased with Google's management of the technology. According to Hinton, such ferocious competition may be hard to quell, leading to a society filled with so much phony imagery and text that no one will be able to discern "what is true anymore."