Artificial intelligence is here and now. Should you be worried?

Computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, widely considered the godfather of artificial intelligence (AI), has resigned from his job at Google and warned against the potential misuse of AI chatbots by "bad actors".

The 75-year-old British-Canadian, whose work laid the foundation for chatbots such as ChatGPT, says AI systems could soon become more intelligent than humans.

He was appointed by Google about a decade ago to advance its AI technology. Understandably, Hinton's take on the subject — he says the dangers of chatbots are "quite scary" — has reignited the debate on humanity's future in the advent of generative AI, which can create large volumes of data in seconds.

Alarm bells

AI has been the media buzzword ever since the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022, sparking questions on the ethical responsibility of their creators and economic as well as existential fallout of their proliferation.

A section of critics has said the use of AI chatbots would contribute to global inequality, while others have predicted mass layoffs at workplaces where artificial intelligence will make human employees redundant. And then there are fears over the flooding of misinformation online — which is already a global challenge.

In this backdrop, over 1,000 technology leaders, researchers and other experts working in the field of AI signed an open letter in March, stressing the AI technologies presented “profound risks to society and humanity”. Tesla boss and Twitter owner Elon Musk was in that group, which called for hitting pause on advanced AI systems for six months to assess the challenges that come with newer technologies.

The letter suggests that concerns about the unknown are palpable among a section of experts, especially since our understanding of what AI technologies could finally achieve and what could go wrong is limited at this point.

Different challenges

Chatbots such as GPT-4 learn their skills by analysing data and finding patterns. They can write poems, blog posts, essays and even computer codes, among other functions. While that's a leap for mankind, AI chatbots also bring to the fore disturbing questions: what if their answers are biased — political or otherwise — and untrue?

And that's only a part of the problem.

A New York Times article titled "What Exactly Are the Dangers Posed by A.I.?" breaks down the challenges posed by artificial intelligence into three categories.

The article identifies "disinformation" as a short-term risk. "Because these systems deliver information with what seems like complete confidence, it can be a struggle to separate truth from fiction when using them...Experts are also worried that people will misuse these systems to spread disinformation. Because they can converse in humanlike ways, they can be surprisingly persuasive," the article says.

In the medium-term, there would be the risk of "job loss", it adds, pointing out that OpenAI, the San Francisco start-up that built ChatGPT, has acknowledged that AI chatbots could replace some workers. Further, in an alarming report, investment bank Goldman Sachs has recently said AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs. Such an event would have wide implications.

The long-term risk, according to the New York Times article, is "loss of control". For there are some who predict a doomsday scenario, fearing that "artificial intelligence could slip outside our control or destroy humanity", even though "many experts say that’s wildly overblown".

"Godfather of AI" Hinton, who is also a cognitive psychologist, says AI systems like ChatGPT "could soon overtake the level of information that a human brain holds", according to the BBC.

In another article in the New York Times — through which he announced his decision to leave Google — Hinton talks of "bad actors" who could try to use AI for "bad things", while he tells the BBC that this "is just a kind of worst-case scenario..."

Here and now

In a grim Time article, Eliezer Yudkowsky, a researcher working with artificial intelligence, says "shut it all down", responding to the letter calling for a halt on AI development for six months. Yudkowsky says he "refrained from signing because I think the letter is understating the seriousness of the situation and asking for too little to solve it".

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