Featured Image Credit: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images, PETER PARKS/AFP via Getty Images
The rise of artificial intelligence is an interesting and hotly debated one in the tech industry.
While some people worry the advancements in technology that allow AI to thrive may result in their job being made redundant – or in a worse case scenario, taking over the world akin to SkyNet in the Terminator series – while others look at the possibility such a rise could bring to society.
Now, the ‘Godfather of AI’, who you’d think would know a thing or two about AI, has issued an alarming warning surrounding its rise.
Professor Geoffrey Hinton left Google last year after he admitted to regretting regarding his work in the field of AI.
The tech pioneer is now warning about what the future may hold for AI, and has been talking about the possibility that it could lead to job losses for millions.
Hinton has suggested there needs to be a universal basic income to mitigate against the impacts of AI’s rise within the job market.
Professor Geoffrey Hinton has issued a stark warning. (GEOFF ROBINS/AFP via Getty Images)
Speaking to BBC’s Newsnight, Hinton said: “I certainly believe in a universal basic income, but I don’t think that’s enough because a lot of people get their self-respect from the jobs they do.
“If you pay everybody a universal basic income, that solves the problem of them starving and not being able to pay the rent but that doesn’t solve the self-respect problem.”
He added that he’d ‘consulted Downing Street’ and ‘advised them that universal basic income was a good idea’.
The former Google tech developer worryingly suggests that many ‘mundane jobs’ will disappear because AI will simply be able to do them.
He went on: “I am very worried about AI taking over lots of mundane jobs. That should be a good thing.
Could this be a possibility in the future? (Getty Stock Photo)
“It’s going to lead to a big increase in productivity, which leads to a big increase in wealth, and if that wealth was equally distributed that would be great, but it’s not going to be.
“In the systems we live in, that wealth is going to go to the rich and not to the people whose jobs get lost, and that’s going to be very bad for society, I believe. It’s going to increase the gap between rich and poor, which increases the chances of right-wing populists getting elected.”
He guessed that ‘between five and 20 years from now’, there’ll be a ‘probability of half that we’ll have to confront the problem of AI trying to take over’ – which he worried would lead to a ‘extinction-level threat’ due to humans having ‘created a form of intelligence that is just better than biological intelligence… That’s very worrying for us’.
Not everyone is as concerned with the rise of AI though, with Bill Gates suggesting earlier this year that the technology has its limitations.
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Google