Ethical AI Insights
Week of June 19, 2023. Issue 10.
A look at the differing opinions between the godfathers of AI
Two of the godfathers of AI are offering differing opinions on the potential harmful impact that AI will have on the world. Geoffrey Hinton, Prof Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio won the Turing award for their work in AI and together became known as “the godfathers of AI”. In the last month, two of the three godfathers have released conflicting statements about what they feel the short, medium and long term impact of AI will be on the world.
You’ve probably heard more about Geoffrey Hinton, as his name became common in AI circles after he left his job at Google and released statements with various news outlets expressing his regret for helping to advance a technology that, in his view, might take over the world.
Prof Yann LeCun, currently the Chief AI Scientist at Meta, released his own statement that aligned with and departed from Hinton’s in more than one way, detailed below.
Will AI surpass human intelligence?
Hinton: Of AI models Hinton said, “They’re still not adequate to model what’s going on in the brain. They’re doing something different and better.” Going into more detail Hinton stated, “Right now, what we’re seeing is things like GPT-4 eclipses a person in the amount of general knowledge it has and it eclipses them by a long way. In terms of reasoning, it’s not as good, but it does already do simple reasoning…and given the rate of progress, we expect things to get better quite fast. So we need to worry about that.”
Prof LeCun: In a BBC article reporting on a press event at which Prof LeCun answered some questions it’s stated that, “He said there was ‘no question’ that AI would surpass human intelligence. But researchers were still missing essential concepts to reach that level, which would take years if not decades to arrive.”
Assessment: They disagree. While they both agree that AI will surpass human intelligence, they disagree on how and what that will look like. They also disagree on the timeline, with Hinton indicating that it’s coming soon, and Prof LeCun indicating that it’s a long way off.
Will AI catastrophically impact jobs?
Hinton: In an interview with New York Times writer Cade Metz for The Daily podcast Hinton said, “A place where it can obviously take away all the drudge work and maybe more besides is in computer programming…So it may be that computer programming, you don’t need so many programs anymore. Because you can tell one of these chat bots what you want the program to do.”
Prof LeCun: In an interview with the BBC he stated, “This is not going to put a lot of people out of work permanently.” However, he also indicated that work is going to change, adding that “we have ‘no idea’ what the most prominent jobs will be 20 years from now.”
Assessment: They disagree. While Hinton and Prof LeCun agree that there will be some job impact, Hinton has a more catastrophic take on the impact AI could have for, at this point, white collar workers. On the other hand, Prof LeCun has an optimistic view that while jobs will be impacted, it will be minimally so, and new opprtunities will come along quickly.
Will AI take over the world?
Hinton: When asked about his fear of AI technology in his interview with The Daily, Hinton brings up two major topics. The first is scale and access. “So these digital agents - as soon as one of them’s learned something, all the others know it…It means many, many copies of a digital agent can read the whole internet in only a month.” When pushed by Cade Metz on the actual capability of these models, Hinton said, “But suppose it’s connected to the internet. Suppose it can get into a data center and modify what’s happening there.” Hinton indicates that be believes these models, either of their own volition or at the hands of bad actors, can cause catastrophic damage the the world.
His second concern about AI taking over the world is militarized robots. “The US Defense Department would like to make robot soldiers. And robot soldiers are going to be pretty scary.”Prof LeCun: When asked about super-intelligent systems, Prof LeCun said the idea that scientists “get to turn on a super-intelligent system that is going to take over the world within minutes” is “preposterously ridiculous.” Of this claim he said, “it’s still going to run on a data centre somewhere with an off switch…and if you realize it’s not safe you just don’t build it.”
Assessment: They agree and disagree. Hinton believes that AI, whether independent or controlled by others, could take over the world in a way that will cause harm, and indicates that we won’t be able to turn off or get control. Prof LeCun believes that all systems will be controllable, although he doesn’t comment on systems controlled by bad actors.
While both godfathers of AI clearly believe the technology is powerful, they differ wildly in how powerful the technology is, how powerful it will be, and how soon that will come about. Only time will tell. What do you think?
Sources: Hinton Interview BBC, Hinton Interview NYT, Prof LeCun interview BBC.
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