Perhaps humanity would have been better off without the invention of artificial intelligence. This is the opinion, in hindsight, of Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, one of the founding fathers of AI, who in an interview with the Guardian spoke of his fears regarding this technology. According to the British computer scientist, within the next year AI could trigger a large-scale accident, such as a temporary blackout of financial systems or electricity grids.
Hinton’s fears
“I am not a catastrophist – explained Hinton to the English newspaper -. Artificial intelligence has the potential to lead us into a wonderful future, however, it could be that, for us, it would have been better not to develop it at all”. As the 78-year-old explained, within a decade, if not sooner, humanity will discover whether it will be able to manage the risks associated with this technology or whether, on the contrary: “we will not be able to manage them, ending up faced with a huge gap between rich and poor, serious cultural problems, mass unemployment and, ultimately, the disintegration of society”.
The Nobel Prize winner also criticized the imprudent attitude of the leaders of some of the main artificial intelligence companies: “I believe that Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Sam Altman understand the risks, but they don’t give a damn. They prefer money. This is my opinion.”
The comparison with Chernobyl
According to Hinton, last summer’s incidents of cybersecurity breaches triggered autonomously by a system of AI agents are comparable to the partial nuclear accident that occurred in 1979 at the Three Mile Island power plant: “By next year we will see a Chernobyl-type event, and it might be enough to make people really pay attention. Like an AI-based attack on the electricity generation system, capable of causing a massive partial blackout or an episode capable of send the financial system into a tailspin for a week. Can you imagine what would happen – he concluded -. We could recover, of course, but something like this would force everyone to sit up and take notice.”