In an interview with The Guardian, Geoffrey Hinton, one of the founding fathers of AI and a Nobel Prize winner, stated that, in hindsight, "perhaps it would have been better if humanity had never developed this technology and warned that, as early as this year or next, it could trigger a large-scale incident, such as a temporary blackout of financial systems or electricity grids." The computer scientist explained to the Guardian that he is not a "catastrophist" and that he believes AI has the potential to lead to a "wonderful future." However, he added, "it may be that, for us, it would have been better not to develop it at all."

Hinton, 78, argued that within a decade, if not sooner, humanity will discover whether it can manage the risks associated with this technology or whether, on the contrary, "we will fail to manage them, ending up facing a huge gap between rich and poor, serious cultural problems, mass unemployment and, ultimately, the disintegration of society."

Hinton also harshly criticized the reckless attitude of the leaders of some of the leading AI companies: "I think Zuckerberg, Musk, and Sam Altman understand the risks, but they don't care. They prefer the money. That's my opinion." According to Hinton, last summer's cybersecurity breaches, triggered autonomously by a system of AI agents, are comparable to the partial nuclear accident that occurred at the Three Mile Island power plant in 1979. "By the end of this year or next year, we'll see a Chernobyl-type event; that might be enough to make people really pay attention," he explained to the Guardian, giving the example of an AI-based attack on the power generation system, capable of "causing a massive partial blackout" or an episode capable of disrupting the financial system for a week. "Can you imagine what would happen? We could recover, sure, but something like this would force everyone to perk up and take notice."

(Unioneonline)

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