"He Knows What He's Talking About": Elon Musk On AI 'Godfather' And His Warning

Tesla owner and billionaire Elon Musk has backed Geoffrey Hinton, known as the 'Godfather of AI'. In a tweet on Tuesday, Mr Musk said the 75-year-old, who has warned about AI chatbots, "knows what he is talking about". Mr Hinton, who quit Google recently, told the New York Times (NYT) that he did this to speak freely about the technology's dangers, after realising that computers could become smarter than people far sooner than he and other experts had expected. Mr Hinton nurtured the technology for decades before realising that it will cause serious harm.

"Hinton knows what he's talking about," Mr Musk said in his tweet, in response to a news article on the topic.

Hinton knows what he's talking about

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 2, 2023

In the interview with NYT, Mr Hinton said he was worried about AI's capacity to create convincing false images and texts, creating a world where people will "not be able to know what is true anymore".

"It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things," he said.

There are fears that the technology could quickly displace workers, and become a greater danger as it learns new behaviours.

"The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people - a few people believed that," said Mr Hinton. "But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that."

Mr Musk too has been expressing concern about the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT. Reacting to a conversation a reporter had with the chatbot, in which he called itself "perfect", the SpaceX CEO said it "sounds eerily like the AI in System Shock that goes haywire and kills everyone".

AI was already gaining prominence, touching the everyday lives of several people after being deployed by companies like e-commerce platforms. But after the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT, there has been a huge increase in human interaction, with users asking it to write essays, speeches and even solve exam questions.