AI pioneers warn of dangers but disagree on solutions. Governments and lawmakers are taking notice, but practical safeguards are lacking.
Computer scientists who were instrumental in the development of artificial intelligence technology are warning about the potential dangers it poses to humanity. However, they do not agree on what those dangers are or how to prevent them. One such scientist is Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI,” who recently retired from Google so he could speak more freely about his concerns. At a conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he plans to outline his concerns about AI and its impact on humanity. Fellow AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, who won the top computer science prize along with Hinton, agrees that the short-term and long-term dangers of AI need to be taken seriously by governments and the population, but believes that simply saying “We’re doomed” is not helpful.
While governments are taking steps to mitigate the risks associated with AI, such as the White House meeting with CEOs of major tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, there are concerns that the focus on future dangers is distracting from attempts to set practical safeguards on current AI products that are largely unregulated. Margaret Mitchell, a former leader on Google’s AI ethics team, is upset that Hinton didn’t speak out during his decade in a position of power at Google, especially after the 2020 ouster of prominent Black scientist Timnit Gebru. She believes that Hinton is ignoring the current issues of discrimination, hate language, toxicity, and nonconsensual pornography of women in tech to worry about something that is farther off.
Yann LeCun, who works at Facebook parent Meta, is the third researcher who was awarded the Turing Prize in 2019 along with Hinton and Bengio. Artificial neural networks, instrumental to the development of today's AI applications, such as ChatGPT, are the breakthroughs they were recognized for. Bengio, who did not take a job with a tech giant, has voiced concerns for years about the short-term risks of AI, including job market destabilization, automated weaponry, and the dangers of biased data sets. It is clear that there is much work to be done to address the risks associated with AI, and it will require collaboration and cooperation from all stakeholders to ensure that the benefits of AI are realized without sacrificing our safety and well-being.
