Artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton has admitted he regrets his work.
The 75-year-old cognitive psychologist and computer scientist - often called 'the Godfather of AI' - has quit Google and is now speaking freely about the risks around the technology.
He told the New York Times: "Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now. Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”
He pointed to the way future versions of the technology could be a threat to humanity as they learn various heaviours from a huge amount of data.
He added: “The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that.
“But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”
He has noted that age is also part of his decision to leave Google.
He has voiced his concerns over the way AI systems like ChatGPT could overtake the level of information held by a human brain.
He told the BBC: "Right now, what we're seeing is things like GPT-4 eclipses a person in the amount of general knowledge it has and it eclipses them by a long way.
"In terms of reasoning, it's not as good, but it does already do simple reasoning.
"And given the rate of progress, we expect things to get better quite fast. So we need to worry about that."
Meanwhile, he did note that Google has been "very responsible" with its work in the area, and stressed that he wasn't criticising the tech giant.
He said: "I actually want to say some good things about Google. And they're more credible if I don't work for Google."
