Artificial intelligence (AI)
Geoffrey Hinton recently quit Google warning of the dangers of artificial intelligence. Is AI really going to destroy us? And how long do we have to prevent it?
The first thing Geoffrey Hinton says when we start talking, and the last thing he repeats before I turn off my recorder, is that he left Google, his employer of the past decade, on good terms. I have no objection to what Google has done or is doing, but obviously the media would love to spin me as a disgruntled Google employee. Its not like that.
Its an important clarification to make, because its easy to conclude the opposite. After all, when most people calmly describe their former employer as being one of a small group of companies charting a course that is alarmingly likely to wipe out humanity itself, they do so with a sense of opprobrium. But to listen to Hinton, were about to sleepwalk towards an existential threat to civilisation without anyone involved acting maliciously at all.
Known as one of three godfathers of AI, in 2018 Hinton won the ACM Turing award the Nobel prize of computer scientists for his work on deep learning. A cognitive psychologist and computer scientist by training, he wasnt motivated by a desire to radically improve technology: instead, it was to understand more about ourselves.
For the last 50 years, Ive been trying to make computer models that can learn stuff a bit like the way the brain learns it, in order to understand better how the brain is learning things, he tells me when we meet in his sisters house in north London, where he is staying (he usually resides in Canada). Looming slightly over me he prefers to talk standing up, he says the tone is uncannily reminiscent of a university tutorial, as the 75-year-old former professor explains his research history, and how it has inescapably led him to the conclusion that we may be doomed.
In trying to model how the human brain works, Hinton found himself one of the leaders in the field of neural networking, an approach to building computer systems that can learn from data and experience. Until recently, neural nets were a curiosity, requiring vast computer power to perform simple tasks worse than other approaches. But in the last decade, as the availability of processing power and vast datasets has exploded, the approach Hinton pioneered has ended up at the centre of a technological revolution.
In trying to think about how the brain could implement the algorithm behind all these models, I decided that maybe it cant and maybe these big models are actually much better than the brain, he says.
A biological intelligence such as ours, he says, has advantages. It runs at low power, just 30 watts, even when youre thinking, and every brain is a bit different. That means we learn by mimicking others. But that approach is very inefficient in terms of information transfer. Digital intelligences, by contrast, have an enormous advantage: its trivial to share information between multiple copies. You pay an enormous cost in terms of energy, but when one of them learns something, all of them know it, and you can easily store more copies. So the good news is, weve discovered the secret of immortality. The bad news is, its not for us.
Once he accepted that we were building intelligences with the potential to outthink humanity, the more alarming conclusions followed. I thought it would happen eventually, but we had plenty of time: 30 to 50 years. I dont think that any more. And I dont know any examples of more intelligent things being controlled by less intelligent things at least, not since Biden got elected.
You need to imagine something more intelligent than us by the same difference that were more intelligent than a frog. And its going to learn from the web, its going to have read every single book thats every been written on how to manipulate people, and also seen it in practice.
He now thinks the crunch time will come in the next five to 20 years, he says. But I wouldnt rule out a year or two. And I still wouldnt rule out 100 years its just that my confidence that this wasnt coming for quite a while has been shaken by the realisation that biological intelligence and digital intelligence are very different, and digital intelligence is probably much better.
Theres still hope, of sorts, that AIs potential could prove to be over-stated. Ive got huge uncertainty at present. It is possible that large language models, the technology that underpins systems such as ChatGPT, having consumed all the documents on the web, wont be able to go much further unless they can get access to all our private data as well. I dont want to rule things like that out I think people who are confident in this situation are crazy. Nonetheless, he says, the right way to think about the odds of disaster is closer to a simple coin toss than we might like.
This development, he argues, is an unavoidable consequence of technology under capitalism. Its not that Googles been bad. In fact, Google is the leader in this research, the core technical breakthroughs that underlie this wave came from Google, and it decided not to release them directly to the public. Google was worried about all the things we worry about, it has a good reputation and doesnt want to mess it up. And I think that was a fair, responsible decision. But the problem is, in a capitalist system, if your competitor then does do that, theres nothing you can do but do the same.
He decided to quit his job at Google, he has said, for three reasons. One was simply his age: at 75, hes not as good at the technical stuff as I used to be, and its very annoying not being as good as you used to be. So I decided it was time to retire from doing real work. But rather than remain in a nicely remunerated ceremonial position, he felt it was important to cut ties entirely, because, if youre employed by a company, theres inevitable self-censorship. If Im employed by Google, I need to keep thinking, How is this going to impact Googles business? And the other reason is that theres actually a lot of good things Id like to say about Google, and theyre more credible if Im not at Google.
Since going public about his fears, Hinton has come under fire for not following some of his colleagues in quitting earlier. In 2020, Timnit Gebru, the technical co-lead of Googles ethical AI team, was fired by the company after a dispute over a research paper spiralled into a wide-ranging clash over the companys diversity and inclusion policies. A letter signed by more than 1,200 Google staffers opposed the firing, saying it heralds danger for people working for ethical and just AI across Google.
But there is a split within the AI faction over which risks are more pressing. We are in a time of great uncertainty, Hinton says, and it might well be that it would be best not to talk about the existential risks at all so as not to distract from these other things [such as issues of AI ethics and justice]. But then, what if because we didnt talk about it, it happens? Simply focusing on the short-term use of AI, to solve the ethical and justice issues present in the technology today, wont necessarily improve humanitys chances of survival at large, he says.
Not that he knows what will. Im not a policy guy. Im just someone whos suddenly become aware that theres a danger of something really bad happening. I want all the best brains who know about AI not just philosophers, politicians and policy wonks but people who actually understand the details of whats happening to think hard about these issues. And many of them are, but I think its something we need to focus on.
Since he first spoke out on Monday, hes been turning down requests from the worlds media at a rate of one every two minutes (he agreed to meet with the Guardian, he said, because he has been a reader for the past 60 years, since he switched from the Daily Worker in the 60s). I have three people who currently want to talk to me Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer and Elon Musk. Oh, and the White House. Im putting them all off until I have a bit more time. I thought when I retired Id have plenty of time to myself.
Throughout our conversation, his lightly jovial tone of voice is somewhat at odds with the message of doom and destruction hes delivering. I ask him if he has any reason for hope. Quite often, people seem to come out of situations that appeared hopeless, and be OK. Like, nuclear weapons: the cold war with these powerful weapons seemed like a very bad situation. Another example would be the Year 2000 problem. It was nothing like this existential risk, but the fact that people saw it ahead of time and made a big fuss about it meant that people overreacted, which was a lot better than under-reacting.
The reason it was never a problem is because people actually sorted it out before it happened.
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