The Guardian: 'Godfather of AI' raises odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years

[Dennis Donovan]

The Guardian - (archived: https://archive.ph/rtWAy ) ‘Godfather of AI’ raises odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years

Geoffrey Hinton says there is 10-20% chance AI will lead to human extinction in next three decades amid fast pace of change

Dan Milmo Global technology editor
Fri 27 Dec 2024 10.50 EST



The British-Canadian computer scientist often touted as a “godfather” of artificial intelligence has raised the odds of AI wiping out humanity over the next three decades, warning the pace of change in the technology is “much faster” than expected.

Prof Geoffrey Hinton, who this year was awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his work in AI, said there was a “10 to 20” per cent chance that AI would lead to human extinction within the next three decades.

Previously Hinton had said there was a 10% chance of the technology triggering a catastrophic outcome for humanity.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if he had changed his analysis of a potential AI apocalypse and the one in 10 chance of it happening, he said: “Not really, 10 to 20 [per cent].”

Hinton’s estimate prompted Today’s guest editor, the former chancellor Sajid Javid, to say “you’re going up”, to which Hinton replied: “If anything. You see, we’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before.”

/snip

[dweller]

1. I have to post this again

So, we have a chance ?






✌🏻

[Silent Type]

2. When the weatherman says 20% chance of rain, it almost never rains.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. 30 years

3 billion more people, no more cheap battery mines, no housing, no water, 82F year round in NJ ... we needed AI to figure this out?

[appmanga]

7. Of course, natural phenomena are more likely to end humanity...

...than the science fiction of AI doing so, but climate change is so much less sexy than robot overlords and sentient drones.

I'd like to think that ten to 20 percent has to do the misuse of AI as a decision making tool and the unchallenged provider of answers.

[cbabe]

4. AI is not a creative force. It's paint by numbers. It can only

reorganize the past. Nothing truly new can come from it.

That’s what humans do.

[getagrip_already]

6. AI could have said that much better.....

And more poetically. It would be more creative.

Thats what AI does.

AI creates new things all the time. So far, humans are the ones asking for it, but it turns out AI can even create more creative prompts than humans.

How that leads to the end of humanity, im not sure. It can certainly be disruptive. It can cause mass unemployment. It can lead humans to do even dumber things than they would normally do. But destroy life on earth, or even civilization?

Not seeing it. Only the stupidity of people will do that. Have faith. Humanity will rise to the occasion and kill itself off without AI getting to it first.

Go people.

[cbabe]

8. AI is a tech product. Humans are taught to

demand stuff like McDonalds and oil pipelines and Facebook.

Software connecting the dots is still not the Mona Lisa.

Or, I don’t trust my toaster to work right, why would I trust AI? ( see Tesla car crashes.)

Ps I’m way more creative than any program because no one knows what I’m going to do next.

[appmanga]

9. While AI creates things, things it creates aren't that creative.

Today's AI can't even write a decent 500 word news story. If we're content with the continued dumbing-down of the use of language, as when people are barraged with scorn for being "pedantic" when it comes to things like spelling and pronunciation, AI may one day be supreme, but it up to us if we let that happen. Even when it comes to software development, I doubt AI will come to dominate that to the point where humans have little involvement.

[getagrip_already]

10. Little? Compared to?

Just look back a couple of decades, where software development was manual, testing could only be done by people, and even error checking code didnt really exist.

It took large teams of people to design, program, compile, test, and debug even small applications. And then serious bugs and flaws sailed right through.

Now, we have tools that will do almost all of that. Add ai, and you have small teams doing large amounts of work. Programming, Testing, QA, error analysis, is largely automated.

So completely eliminated? No, but a much smaller workforce with different skills. Lots of smart hands and few smart minds.

You dont need people who can design and code device drivers anymore. You just need them to specify the build requirements and verify functionality.

So yeah, AI and modern toolsets are revolutionizing even app dev through release.

And so it has always been. Search engines also had a huge impact.

[Turbineguy]

5. We have to get through the next 4 years first.