There's a '10% to 20% chance' that AI will displace humans completely

Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist known as a "Godfather of AI," says the technology he helped create is getting increasingly scary — and not enough people are taking the risks of artificial intelligence seriously.

"There's risks that come from people misusing AI, and that's most of the risks and all of the short-term risks. And then there's risks that come from AI getting super smart and understanding it doesn't need us," Hinton, an ex-Google vice president who won the 2018 Turing Award for his decades of pioneering work on AI and deep learning, said on Monday's podcast episode of "The Diary of a CEO."

AI's rapid spread across the world includes a rising number of students using ChatGPT, CEOs mandating the technology's use in their workplaces and tech luminaries like Mark Cuban and Jensen Huang saying that AI will soon be the differentiator between success and failure, for employees and businesses alike.

But the engineers who build today's AI systems still don't fully understand how the technology works and evolves, leaving many of them split on its future. Some predict a future technological uprising where AIs displace humans, and others dismiss the worry as science fiction, Hinton said.

"I think both of those positions are extreme," said Hinton, 77. "I often say [there's a] 10% to 20% chance [for AI] to wipe us out. But that's just gut, based on the idea that we're still making them and we're pretty ingenious. And the hope is that if enough smart people do enough research with enough resources, we'll figure out a way to build them so they'll never want to harm us."

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As for the shorter-term risks that Hinton described, AI suffers from "hallucinations" — factual inaccuracies seemingly created from thin air — and allows people to manufacture fake images, videos and audio with relative ease. The technology also seems poised to automate a series of entry-level job responsibilities in many white-collar industries, though some tech leaders say it'll ultimately create more jobs than it replaces.

And AI-enabled scams are becoming increasingly common, CoinStructive co-founders Chris Groshong and Joseph Albiñana told Forbes on June 12. Scammers can use the tech to create lip-synced conversations, fake firmware and impersonate other people in video chats, where unassuming victims share personal and financial information, said Groshong, whose company is a crypto compliance and investigation firm.

Humanity is likely at "a kind of turning point," Hinton said on CBS' "60 Minutes," in an interview that first aired on Oct. 8, 2023. "I think my main message is there's enormous uncertainty about what's going to happen next."

Hinton quit his job at Google in May 2023 after a decade with the company so he could speak freely about the risks posed by AI, he told The New York Times at the time. But the worst-case scenario is no sure thing, and industries like health care have already benefitted tremendously from AI, he said on "60 Minutes."

During that television appearance, he called for more research to understand AI, government regulations to rein in the technology and worldwide bans on AI-powered military robots. Whatever AI guardrails get put into place — whether by tech companies, the U.S. federal government or other governments across the world — they need to happen soon, Hinton said.

On Monday's podcast interview, Hinton offered listeners advice for safeguarding themselves against AI-augmented scams: Diversify where your money is held, and regularly back up your data to an external hard drive. If you fall victim to a scam, you'll only lose some of your money, and you can quickly restore your computer and phone to working order, he said.

Hinton holds his own money in three separate banks, he said.

More generally, diversifying your assets is a smart financial move, according to financial analyst and personal finance expert Chris Browning. He recommends spreading your money across five different accounts: two separate checking accounts for bills and lifestyle spending, and three savings accounts for long-term savings, short-term savings and an emergency fund, he wrote for CNBC Make It on December 9, 2021.

"Try not to keep all your accounts at the same bank," wrote Browning. "In case technology fails at one institution, for example, you have accounts at other banks to fall back on."

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