Researchers Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield, whose work on machine learning led to the development of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI products, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday.
“Their work was fundamental in laying the cornerstones for what we experience today as artificial intelligence,” Mark Pearce, a member of the Nobel committee of physics, told CNN.
Hinton, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto who has been called the “godfather of AI,” has expressed fears about AI’s future development. Last year, he resigned from Google after a decade to speak out on the “existential risk” of the technology.
While the juxtaposition of his opinion might initially read like a Dr. Frankenstein warning the villagers about his creation, Hinton’s views on AI highlight his deep understanding of the technology and its consequences if it is not used properly, said Gary Survis, operating partner at Insight Partners.
“As the saying goes, ‘With great power comes great responsibility,'” Survis said in an interview, in which he further compared Hinton to Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atom bomb” who later advocated a cease to atomic weapons development.
In fact, President Joe Biden is expected to receive an executive memo any day that outlines security measures the federal government and private companies can undertake together to minimize the risk of AI.
At the ceremony in Sweden, Hinton said he was “flabbergasted” by the award.
AI “will be comparable with the industrial revolution,” Hinton said in a subsequent interview with CNN. “But instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed people in intellectual ability. We have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us.”
“We also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control,” he warned. “I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control.”
The prize committee did not refer to Hinton’s warnings. Instead, it praised him and Hopfield, a professor at Princeton University, for “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.” The panel did touch on the growing influence of AI and its impact globally.