Hinton is often referred to as the ‘Godfather of AI’ due to his trailblazing research in neural networks and deep learning which paved the way for AI systems like ChatGPT.

Before resigning, Hinton was VP and Engineering fellow at Google. He was also an alumni of the University of Edinburgh, where he received his PhD in artificial intelligence in 1978. 

The 75-year-old British-Canadian announced his resignation in a statement to the New York Times along with sombre warnings for what is to come with regards to the technology. According to a tweet from Hinton, he did not leave to criticise Google, rather so he could speak openly about the dangers of AI without worrying how it would impact Google.

His concerns with AI are largely centred around the flooding of photos, videos and text on the internet, shrouding the line of what is true. He also worries about AI taking over jobs, research by Goldman Sachs suggests it could soon take over 300 million full-time jobs, and a quarter of the jobs in the US and Europe. 

“The kind of intelligence we’re developing is very different from the intelligence we have,” Hinton told the BBC. “It’s as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learnt something, everybody automatically knew it. And that’s how these chatbots can know so much more than any one person.”

Perhaps more bleak than false information and layoffs, Hinton warns that AI could eventually pose a threat to humanity after learning unexpected behaviour from mass amounts of data. That there could soon be an AI arms race to power and develop lethal autonomous weapons systems. 

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Hinton warns of bad actors who could use AI for “bad things”, such as “You can imagine, for example, some bad actor like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin decided to give robots the ability to create their own sub-goals” , he told the BBC. “This is just a kind of worst-case scenario, kind of a nightmare scenario,” he said. 

Although he expressed partial regrets for his life’s work, he consoles himself by saying: “If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have.” Additionally, he stressed the fact that Google had been “very responsible” about its approach to AI.