In the film Don’t Look Up (Do not look up), released at the end of 2021 by Netflix, Humanity is going to hell because nobody does anything while two scientists explain to the world that an asteroid is heading on a collision course towards Earth and it will end life on the planet. Although the great apocalyptic satire starring Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio was a clear covert criticism of the way we look the other way to avoid having to face the urgent measures to which climate change is urging us, it already has a reference in technology most powerful that can threaten our existence: artificial intelligence.
Last Monday, Geoffrey Hinton, considered the godfather of AI, left his job at Google to be able to criticize openly and without being associated with this company about the dangers of this technology. It is not that a multi-award-winning researcher, with a decisive contribution to the development of deep neural networks, wants to disapprove of what his former company is doing, quite the opposite, but he does not want to have a job dependency to be able to express himself freely.
In a conversation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) magazine, it is revealed that Hinton watched Don’t Look Up just a few weeks ago and found a strong similarity to what is happening with artificial intelligence and other issues.
“I think that’s what happens with AI,†Hinton explained to MIT Technology Review. Without making it clear how the film has influenced his decision to warn about the dangers of a technology he has helped create, he also pointed out that inaction and the blockade affect other pressing problems: “The United States is not even capable of agree to prevent assault rifles from getting into the hands of teenagers.â€
Hinton seems to have woken up. “Suddenly,†he explained to the magazine, “I have changed my mind about whether these things are going to outsmart us. I think that now they are very close to it and that in the future they will be much smarter than us. How will we survive that?” In his opinion, machines will one day have goals of their own, such as redirecting all electricity to the computers it lives on, or making numerous copies of itself. Machines can share everything they learn instantly, not like we humans do.
Many of the things Hinton warns about, like Putin wanting intelligent robots to win the war, can be scary, but of all he told MIT Technology Review, the scariest thing is how he said goodbye to the journalist at the doorstep: “Have fun, because you may not have much time left.” He then laughed and closed the door.
