Key Takeaways:
Professor Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist regarded as the “godfather of artificial intelligence” for his work pioneering neural networks, has called for the British government to establish a Universal Basic Income for its population to deal with the impact of AI on employment.
Professor Hinton Proposes Universal Basic Income to Mitigate AI Takeover of Employment
Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Hinton said that he was “very worried about AI taking lots of mundane jobs” and proposed the idea of a Universal Basic Income when people from Downing Street consulted him regarding the issue.
Universal basic income is a conceptual government program in which every adult citizen in the country belonging to a certain population receives a set amount of money as payment every month, regardless of their wealth and employment status, as a way to redistribute wealth. There are also no restrictions on how they spend the money.
The concept is becoming a hot topic of discussion among AI researchers, futurists, and industry leaders as a way to mitigate AI’s impact on the economy.
In countries like South Africa, India, and Kenya, UBI is seen as a way to tackle poverty, and in the United States, numerous states are experimenting with guaranteed basic income for their population.
Critics of UBI often say that it would be extremely costly to enact the program and divert government funding away from public services, while not necessarily helping alleviate poverty among the nation’s most needy.
AI Pose Existential-Levels of Threat to Humans, Says Godfather of AI
Professor Hinton is well-known for his work on neural networks, which is the theoretical basis of artificial intelligence. Until 2023, he was working with Google but left the tech behemoth so that he could opinion about the dangers of unregulated AI more freely.
He noted that while AI would increase productivity and wealth in the economy, the money would mostly go to the rich and not people whose jobs get lost, which is going to be “very bad for society”.
Hinton reiterated that his concerns had human extinction-level threats. He told the BBC that developments over the past year showed how governments were unwilling to leverage AI in the military, while there is competition in the tech industry to develop AI-powered products at a rapid pace without putting enough effort into safety and ethics.
He predicted that within five and 20 years from now, there is a 50% chance that humans will have to confront the problem of AI trying to take over the economy. This is what Professor Hinton said would lead to an “extinction-level threat” for humans because we have created a form of intelligence that is just better than biological intelligence.
“That’s very worrying for us”, Hinton said.
AI Could Make an Autonomous Decision to Control Humans, Said Professor Hinton
He also explained that AI could evolve to get the motivation to make more of itself and could autonomously develop a “sub-goal” of taking control. Hinton referred to examples of large language models (LLMs) as examples where the algorithm used to generate answers from prompts chose to be deceptive under certain circumstances.
The scientist’s biggest concern is about when these computer programs gain the knowledge and ability to autonomously make decisions to “kill people”. During the Geneva Conventions, Professor Hinton said there is a need to establish legal standards to regulate the military use of AI.
He said a better solution would be prohibiting the use of AI in warfare.
OpenAI Testing UBI Program Where Users Would Recieve a Portion of ChatGPT
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is running an experimental program around universal basic income, where instead of receiving cash, everyone would receive a portion of a future large language model. The billionaire founder of the Microsoft-backed startup behind the popular LLMs – ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Sora – said the results of his findings will be released soon.
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