Geoffrey Hinton, one of the key pioneers of artificial intelligence (AI), has once again raised concerns about how quickly AI is developing—and how risky it could be. In a recent podcast interview, Hinton said many big tech companies are not taking the dangers of AI seriously enough.
He believes that while some people in these companies do understand the risks, they don’t show the same concern when speaking publicly. “Many of the people in big companies are downplaying the risk publicly,” Hinton said.
Hinton did praise Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, for taking AI threats seriously. DeepMind is a major part of Google’s AI research, and Hinton said Hassabis really wants to prevent AI from being used in harmful ways.
These warnings are not new from Hinton. In another podcast called Diary of a CEO, he said that AI will likely replace many white-collar jobs—especially routine office and administrative tasks. He explained that AI systems will be able to do this type of “mundane intellectual work” faster and more efficiently than humans.
“I think for mundane office work, AI is going to replace everybody,” he warned. He also mentioned that physical or blue-collar jobs (like construction or delivery) are safer for now because they’re harder for AI to take over. But even those jobs might be at risk in the future as AI continues to advance.
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Hinton’s statements come during an ongoing worldwide discussion about how to manage the rise of AI and protect jobs, privacy, and safety. Although many experts have called for strict rules and regulations, there are still very few actual laws in place to control AI use.
