The AIs Are No Longer Science Fiction
The Sorcerer’s Apprentices If you are old enough, you may recall the 1940 Disney movie Fantasia, especially the cartoon of Dukas’ symphonic poem, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” starring Mickey Mouse and a host of magic brooms. The grizzled old wizard goes to bed for the night, and Mickey works a spell to animate some brooms, which quickly multiply and wreak havoc, until the sorcerer returns and sets things right. When it comes to the sorcery of AI, the grizzled old wizard is 78-year-old Geoffrey Hinton, the British-Canadian computer scientist commonly called “the godfather of AI.” He pioneered deep learning, worked for Google Brain, and in 2024 won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on artificial neural networks. In his Nobel banquet speech, Hinton warned of “the existential threat that will arise when we create digital beings that are more intelligent than ourselves:” We have no idea whether we can stay in control. But we now have evidence that if they are created by companies motivated by short-term profits, our safety will not be the top priority. We urgently need research on how to prevent these new beings from wanting to take control. They are no longer science fiction. Mark […]
