Geoffrey Hinton, commonly known as the “Godfather of AI” for his work on neural networks, said that most people at tech companies are aware of the dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) but they aren’t doing much about it.
“Many of the people in big companies, I think, are downplaying the risk publicly,” Hinton said on the One Decision podcast, which aired on July 24.
Company that understands AI risk according to Geoffrey Hinton
Hinton mentioned one exception – Demis Hassabis. He is the CEO of Google DeepMind, Google’s top AI lab. He co-founded DeepMind in 2010 and sold it to Google in 2014 for $650 million, with a promise from Google to form an AI ethics board.
“Demis Hassabis, for example, really does understand about the risks, and really wants to do something about it,” he said.
Google DeepMind is a top AI research lab started in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2010. Google bought it in 2014 and in 2023, it joined with another Google team, Google Brain, to become one team called Google DeepMind.
DeepMind is known for major breakthroughs in AI. It created AlphaGo, the first program to beat a world champion at the game Go and AlphaFold, which helps scientists understand how proteins fold, something that was a mystery for decades.
DeepMind works on cutting-edge AI like reinforcement learning, large language models and generative AI. It powers tools like Gemini and Imagen and its goal is to create AI that helps people and supports science in a safe and ethical way.
Hassabis wants stronger AI rules
Hassabis, a Nobel Prize winner, has long believed that AI should be led by scientists and academics. But now, he’s helping lead Google’s charge to become a top player in AI.
Earlier this year, in February, Hassabis said that AI could pose serious future threats and warned that powerful AI systems could become hard to control. He also said the world needs an international group to regulate AI.
Recently, protesters stood outside DeepMind’s London office asking for more transparency around AI.
Hinton worked at Google for over ten years before he quit, saying he wanted to talk more openly about the dangers of AI. He said on another podcast episode that Google had asked him to stay and focus on AI safety while still working there.
Hinton didn’t say many kind things about other Big Tech leaders. On the podcast, he said: “The people who control AI, people like Musk and Zuckerberg, they are oligarchs.”
When asked whether he trusts them, Hinton replied: “I think when I called them oligarchs, you know the answer to that.”
