'Godfather of AI' gets Nobel Prize in Physics; shares his big AI worry

Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian scientist dubbed the "Godfather of AI," has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics alongside American professor John J. Hopfield for their work on artificial neural networks. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the joint award on Tuesday, recognizing the researchers' crucial early contributions to the field of artificial intelligence.
Hinton, 76, expressed surprise at receiving the honor. "I'm flabbergasted," he told the Nobel committee. "I was in a cheap hotel in California that does not have an internet connection and does not have a very good phone connection. I was going to get an MRI scan today, but I think I'll have to cancel that."
The scientists' work in the 1970s and '80s laid the foundation for modern AI systems, including large language models like ChatGPT. Hinton's research on "back propagation" algorithms and applying principles from physics to pattern recognition in data proved instrumental in advancing machine learning.

However, Hinton used the occasion to warn about potential dangers posed by rapidly advancing AI technology. "We also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control," he cautioned. "I think it's very important right now for people to be working on the issue of how will we keep control. We need to put a lot of research effort into it."
The researcher, who recently left his position at Google to speak more freely about AI risks, expressed concern that AI systems could eventually surpass human intelligence. "We have no experience of what it is like to have things smarter than us," Hinton said.
Despite his reservations, Hinton acknowledged AI's potential benefits. "It's going to be wonderful in many respects," he said. "In areas like healthcare it's going to give us much better healthcare. In almost all industries it's going to make them more efficient. People are going to be able to do the same amount of work with an AI assistant in much less time."
Hinton emphasised the need for increased safety research, suggesting that "one thing governments can do is force the big companies to spend a lot more of their resources on safety research, so that for example, companies like OpenAI can't just put safety research on the back burner."
When asked if he had any regrets about his work, Hinton replied, "In the same circumstance I would do the same again, but I do worry that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control."