Monday’s (1 May) news that Dr Geoffrey Hinton, the neural-network pioneer dubbed ‘The Godfather of AI’, was leaving Google sent shockwaves through the community – and beyond.
He is leaving so that he has greater freedom to warn about the risks he sees surrounding AI.
Before reading his full interview with The New York Times (or maybe after), many assumed this was side-eye aimed at his employer for the last decade. Hinton was quick to dispel the idea, tweeting his view that the company has “acted very responsibly.” This is not a Timnit Gebru/Margaret Mitchell re-run.
Hinton seems to believe that taking positions that will inevitably combine technological understanding with the political, the economic and the moral would be inappropriate, even irresponsible, coming from a senior staffer within a giant corporate player in AI.
There would always be questions over whom he spoke for. There may still be. Google and Microsoft are at one another’s throats over...