The Godfather of AI Thinks We’re Doomed (Maybe): Should We Be Worried?

This isn’t just another AI hype moment. Geoffrey Hinton, aka the “Godfather of AI” (and recent Nobel Prize winner), just dropped a bombshell: there’s now a 10-20% chance that AI could lead to humanity’s extinction in the next 30 years. Yeah, we’re talking endgame stuff. 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%.” He added: “Because the situation we’re in now is that most of the experts in the field think that sometimes, within probably the next 20 years, we’re going to develop AIs that are smarter than people. And that’s a very scary thought.”

Let’s unpack this with some stats and facts:

In 2018, the largest AI model had 345 million parameters. By 2024, OpenAI’s GPT-4 hit 1.7 trillion parameters. That’s a 5000% increase in just six years. Companies are pouring billions into AI, with global AI investments expected to hit $500 billion by 2025.

Hinton’s concerns centre around the rapid advancement of AI technology, which he believes could soon surpass human intelligence and escape human control. “I suddenly changed my mind about whether these objects will be smarter than us. I think they are very close to it today and will be much smarter than us in the future… How are we going to survive that?” he explained, according to Popular Science.

Hinton believes that if we don’t manage AI now, we could face consequences that make these risks seem small.

Hinton is one of the three “godfathers of AI” who have won the ACM AM Turing award – the computer science equivalent of the Nobel prize – for their work. However, one of the trio, Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has played down the existential threat and has said AI “could save humanity from extinction”.