When the Godfather of AI Fears His Own Creation

Geoffrey Hinton’s Startling Concerns about the Future of Artificial Intelligence

Tan Han Wei
3 min readMay 2, 2023
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Few people have made as major contributions to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) as Geoffrey Hinton. This humble British-born computer scientist has played a critical role in defining the AI landscape and has earned the moniker “Godfather of AI.” However, Hinton recently resigned from his position at Google, expressing concern and regret about the potential dangers of AI in the hands of bad actors.

Let me take you on a tour through Geoffrey Hinton’s incredible career for those who are unfamiliar with him.

A Brief History of the Godfather of AI

Geoffrey Hinton’s journey in AI began back in the 1980s when he started developing deep learning, a unique form of machine learning. This technique involves teaching computers to emulate human brain’s neural networks, equipping them to process and learn from enormous amounts of data. Over the past several decades, Hinton’s groundbreaking work has transformed the way AI is utilized in numerous fields, ranging from image recognition to natural language understanding. His research laid the foundation for countless AI applications we use today, such as voice assistants like Siri and…

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