The "Godfather Of AI" Sat Down With 60 Minutes To Warn The Entire World How Fucked We Are If We Don't Immediately Ban Military Robots

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Source - Geoffrey Hinton, who has been called “the Godfather of AI,” sat down with 60 Minutes for Sunday’s episode to break down what artificial intelligence technology could mean for humanity in the coming years, both good and bad.

Hinton is a British computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, best known for his work on artificial neural networks — aka the framework for AI. He spent a decade working for Google before leaving in May of this year, citing concerns about the risks of AI.

Pelley opened the Q&A with Hinton by asking him if humanity knows what it’s doing.

“No,” Hinton replied. “I think we’re moving into a period when for the first time ever, we have things more intelligent than us.”

Hinton expanded on that by saying he believes the most advanced AI systems can understand, are intelligent and can make decisions based on their own experiences. 

When asked if AI systems are conscious, Hinton said that due to a current lack of self-awareness, they probably aren’t, but that day is coming “in time.” And he agreed with Pelley’s take that, consequently, human beings will be the second-most intelligent beings on the planet.

Okay so lets stop here for a second and recap. This guy, Geoffrey Hinton, created the framework for all modern AI and much like a mad scientist, decided to stop his work once he realized the dangers of his creation. In other words, he saw the potential for disaster and said, "fuck this, I'm out."  Not only that, he's now actively campaigning to shut it down. Chief wrote about it here. But the real takeaway from Geoffrey's latest "for the love of God listen to me" interview is this…

 When pressed by Pelley if that means AI may one day take over humanity, Hinton said "yes, that's a possibility. I’m not saying it will happen. If we could stop them ever wanting to, that would be great. But it’s not clear we can stop them ever wanting to."

Hinton said that this could be a bit of a turning point, where humanity may have to face the decision of whether to develop these things further and how people should “protect themselves” if they do.

“I think my main message is, there’s enormous uncertainty about what’s going to happen next,” Hinton said. “These things do understand, and because they understand we need to think hard about what’s next, and we just don’t know.”

Pelley reported that Hinton said he has no regrets about the work he’s done given AI’s potential for good, but that now is the time to run more experiments on it to understand, to impose certain regulations and for a world treaty to ban the use of military robots.

In other words if AI continues to advanced and is applied in a military setting, those machines would have the potential to legitimately take over the the world. They'd be smarter than us, faster than us, more durable, and more deadly. Scary? Sure, but realistically speaking I'll be long gone before we get to this point. And if I'm not…it'd be kinda cool to witness, right? Machines taking over the world. Us vs Them. We could call it "the war for humanity." Everyone would unite. It would be great. I mean obviously they'd wipe the floor us, but for those brief moments humanity as a whole would come together for the greater good. Talk about a fantastic way to go out. Annyyywho this blog got pretty dark so I'm going to go ahead and end it here. Thanks for reading. Have a lovely evening.