The human cost of AI, with Geoffrey Hinton

Computer scientist and Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World podcast to talk about artificial intelligence, the technology transforming our society faster than anything humans have ever built. The question is: how fast is too fast? Hinton is known as the “Godfather of AI.” He helped build the neural networks that made today’s generative AI tools possible and that work earned him the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics. But recently, he’s turned from a tech evangelist to a whistleblower, warning that the technology he helped create will displace millions of jobs and eventually destroy humanity itself.

The Nobel laureate joins Ian to discuss some of the biggest threats from AI: Mass job loss, widening inequality, social unrest, autonomous weapons, and eventually something far more dire: AI that becomes smarter than humans and might not let us turn it off. But he also sees a path forward: if we can model good behavior and program ‘maternal instincts’ into AI, could we avoid a worst-case scenario?

"They're going to be much smarter than us. We are not going to be fully in control anymore," says Hinton, "We have to somehow figure out how to make them care more about us than they do about themselves."

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