geoff: This has been a week were
concerns over the rapidly
expanding use of artificial
intelligence resonated loudly in
Washington and around the world.
Vice president Kamala Harris met
with top executives from
companies leading in ai
development, Microsoft, Google.
The vice president discussed
some of the growing risks and
told companies they had a moral
obligation to develop ai safely.
That meeting came just days
after my the leading voices in
the field of ai announced he was
quitting Google over his worries
over the future of ai and what
he could eventually lead to,
unchecked.
We would her about some of those
concerns now with Dr. Jeffrey
Hinton, which jointly from
London.
Thank you for joining us.
Were you free to express about
artificial intelligence that you
could not express freely when
you were employed by Google?
>> It was not that I could not
express it freely when employed
by Google but inevitably, if you
work for a company you tend to
self censor.
You think about the impact it
will have on the company.
I want to be able to talk about
what I now perceive of the risks
of super intelligent ai without
having to think about the impact
on Google.
Geoff: What are those risks?
>> There are quite a few
different risks.
There is the risk of producing a
lot of fake news so you do not
know what is true anymore.
There is the risk of encouraging
polarization by getting people
to click on things.
There is the risk of putting
people out of work.
It should be would we make
things more productive, greatly
increase productivity, it helps
everyone.
There is the were it might just
help the rich.
There is the risk I want to talk
about.
Many other people talk about the
other risks, including bias and
discrimination.
I want to talk about a different
risk, the risk of super
intelligent ai taking over
control from people.
Geoff: How do the two compared
-- human intelligence and
machine intelligence?
>> That is a very good question
and I have quite a long answer.
Biological intelligence uses
very little power.
We only use 30 Watts.
We have huge numbers of
connections, like 100 trillion
between neurons.
Learning can change the strength
of the connections.
Digital intelligence we have
created uses a lot of power when
you are training it.
It has far fewer connections,
only 1 trillion but I can learn
much, much more than any one
person which suggests that it is
a better learning algorithm than
the brain.
Geoff: What would smarter than
human ai systems do?
What is the concern that you
have?
>> The question is -- what will
motivate them?
They could easily manipulate us
if they wanted to.
Imagine yourself and a
two-year-old child.
You could ask if you want the
peas or the cauliflower and the
child does not realize it does
not have to have either.
We know for example that you can
invade a building in Washington
without ever going there
yourself by manipulative people.
Imagine someone who is much
better than manipulate people
than our current politicians.
Geoff: Why would ai want to do
that?
Would that not require some form
of sentence?
>> Let's not get confused about
that issue.
I do not want to confuse the
issue.
Let me give you one example
white but want to do that.
Suppose you are getting ai to do
something.
You give it a goal.
You give it the ability to
create sub goals.
You create a sub goal of getting
a taxi.
One thing you will notice
quickly is there is a sub goal,
you can achieve it to make it
easier to achieve the other
goals.
The subgoals make it easier to
get more control and get more
power.
The more power you have, the
easier it is to get things done.
We give a perfectly reasonable
goal, it decides in order to do
that I will give myself normal
power.
Because it is much smarter than
us and trained from everything
people ever did, it has read
every novel, it knows a lot
about how to mend appealing
people.
There is the worry it might
start manipulating us into
giving more power.
We might not have a clue what is
going on.
Geoff: When you were at the
forefront of this technology
decades ago, what did you think
it by due?
What were the applications you
had in mind?
>> There are a huge number of
good applications and that would
be a mistake to stop developing.
It will be useful in medicine.
Would you rather see a family
doctor that has seen a few
thousand patients or a doctor
that has seen a few million
patients, including many with
the same rare disease you have?
You could make better
nanotechnology for solar panels.
You can predict floods and
earthquakes.
You can do tremendous good with
this.
Geoff: Is the problem then the
technology or is the problem the
people behind it?
>> It is a combination of.
Obviously, many of the
organizations developing this
our defense departments.
Defense departments do not
necessarily want to build in "Be
nice to people" as the first
rule.
Some defense department would
like to build in "Kill people of
a particular kind."
We cannot expect them to have
good intentions toward all
people.
Geoff: There is the question
about what to do to it.
The technology is advancing
faster than societies can keep
pace with.
The capabilities of this
technology, they leap forward
every few months.
When it is required to write
legislation, pass legislation,
that takes years.
>> I have gone public to try to
encourage a much more -- many
more creative scientists to get
into this area.
I think it is an area in which
we can actually have
international collaboration.
The machines taking over as a
threat for everybody.
It is a threat for the Chinese,
Americans and Europeans.
Just like a global nuclear war.
For a global nuclear war, people
did collaborate to reduce the
chances of it.
Geoff: There are other experts
in the field of ai who said the
concerns you are raising, this
dystopian future, that it
distracts from the very real and
immediate risks posed by
artificial intelligence, some of
them you mentioned --
disinformation, fraud.
>> I do not want to distract
from those.
They are very important concerns
and we should be working on
those, too.
I just want to add this other
existential threat of it taking
over.
One reason I want to do that is
because that is an area in which
I think we can get international
collaboration.
Geoff: Is there any turning
back?
You say there is a time that ai
is more intelligence than us.
Is there any coming back from
that?
>> I do not know.
We are entering a time of great
uncertainty.
We are dealing with things we
have never dealt with before.
It is this aliens have landed
but we did not take it in.
Geoff: How should we think
differently about artificial
intelligence?
>> We should realize that we are
probably going to get things
more intelligent than us quite
soon and they will be wonderful.
They will be able to do all
sorts of things very easily that
we find difficult.
This huge positive potential.
But of course there is also huge
negative possibilities.
I think we should put more
resources into developing ai to
make it more powerful and
figuring out how to keep it
under control and minimizing bad
side effects.
Geoff: Thank you so much for
your time and sharing your
insights with us.
>> Thank you for inviting me.
♪♪