Geoffrey Hinton, the man widely regarded as the “godfather of AI” for his groundbreaking work behind many of today’s AI systems, has said on more than one occasion how the technology could potentially wipe out humanity if its development isn’t handled with care.
But while pondering such a profound possibility, OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot recently surprised Hinton in a most unexpected way: His girlfriend used it to end their relationship.
“She got ChatGPT to tell me what a rat I was,” he told the Financial Times in a recent interview, admitting that he was surprised by her move to call on the AI tool regarding such a delicate matter.
“She got the chatbot to explain how awful my behavior was and gave it to me,” the AI pioneer said, adding, “I didn’t think I had been a rat, so it didn’t make me feel too bad.”
In fact, getting AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT to compose breakup texts, or even ask for advice on how to end a relationship, appears to be nothing new, with an increasing number of people consulting AI on a whole raft of life issues.
Hinton, who last year received the Nobel Prize in Physics for work in the 1980s that led to machine learning with artificial neural networks, quit Google in 2023 after working there for a decade on various AI projects.
Now 77, the AI expert is a University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, an institution he’s been closely affiliated with since 1987.
Hinton still worries about how a superintelligent version of AI could cause major problems for humanity in the future, suggesting to the FT that those developing the technology today — OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, and Google among them — should try to shape it so that it mothers us “because the mother is very concerned about the baby, preserving the life of the baby.” In other words, it needs to have maternal instincts.
On the matter of when AI will actually gain superintelligence — the goal of many of the top AI companies today — Hinton says that “a lot of scientists agree between five and 20 years, that’s the best bet.”
He also predicts that AI “is going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits,” with the technology making “a few people much richer and most people poorer.” For that he blamed “the capitalist system,” not AI.
And with all of his knowledge, the AI specialist can only say that “we have no idea” how the technology will develop, adding that it “may be amazingly good, and it may be amazingly bad.”
On a brighter note, Hinton said he’s now met a new partner. Here’s hoping that the new relationship doesn’t also end with a ChatGPT-worded breakup.
