Becoming a plumber would be a good bet, the Godfather of AI says

Geoffrey Hinton is on a mission to warn everyone about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI). While he doesn’t rule out the possibility of AI technology wiping out humans, for now, simply learning a manual skill might be enough to ensure survival.

Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist often called the godfather of artificial intelligence (AI), is an AI skeptic, often voicing regrets that he helped create AI and not shying away from predictions like AI could lead to a human extinction event.

His public interviews sound as terrifying as the headlines about him. This time, he sat down with Steven Bartlett, a host of The Diary Of A CEO show on YouTube, for a lengthy talk about just how terrifying the technology is.

“My mission is to warn people how dangerous AI could be,” he said.

Hinton said that he didn’t foresee some of the risks he recognizes now, such as the threat that AI might outsmart us and humans would become irrelevant.

“We don't know how much of a risk it is. We've never been in that situation before. We've never had to deal with things smarter than us. So really, the thing about that existential threat is that we have no idea how to deal with it,” Hinton said.

He believes that there’s a 20% chance that AI could wipe out humanity.

More down-to-earth risks for now stem from bad actors abusing AI.

“The problem with that is that it just requires one crazy guy with a grudge, one guy who knows a little bit of molecular biology, knows a lot about AI, and just wants to destroy the world. You can now create new viruses relatively cheaply using AI,” Hinton added.

Hinton also highlighted additional risks, including cyberattacks, election interference, corruption, the creation of autonomous lethal weapons, and the formation of echo chambers.

When talking about our prospects in the era of super intelligence, Hinton said the following: “I'd say it's going to be a long time before it's as good at physical manipulation as us. A good bet would be to be a plumber.”

Hinton doesn’t believe that it’s possible to slow down the development of AI because of fierce competition between countries and companies, which is only accelerating the process.

“If the US slowed it down, China wouldn’t slow it down.”