“We have never been around anything smarter than us,” worries laureate Geoffrey Hinton

Despite his work, one of the two winners of the Nobel Prize in physics admits to fearing the possible deviations of his own research in the area of ​​artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Like a warning. “I am flabbergasted, I had no idea this would happen, I’m very surprised” said Geoffrey Hinton, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday October 8, 2024. Alongside the American John Hopfield, the British-Canadian was distinguished for his pioneering research in artificial intelligence, more particularly his work on THE “artificial neural networks“, a copy of how our brain works that allows computers to learn on their own.

The researcher, aged 76 and professor at the University of Toronto in Canada, is considered one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence. But this pioneer is afraid of his own creation. “We’ve never been around anything smarter than ushe alarms. This would be great in many ways, but I fear the overall consequence of all this will be systems smarter than us eventually taking control.”

In March 2023, Geoffrey Hinton had already been questioned by American television about “risks that artificial intelligence will wipe out humanity“. He then replied that “It wasn’t unimaginable.”

The Nobel physics committee welcomes discoveries with very concrete applications: facial recognition, translation, more effective medical diagnostics…, but also shares Geoffrey Hinton’s reservations.

Shortly after the announcement of the winner, the president of the committee, Ellen Moons, in turn, called for caution: “CCollectively, we bear the responsibility to use this technology in a safe and ethical manner for the benefit of humanity.”. A debate that divides the scientific community. Other experts, on the contrary, are optimistic about artificial intelligence and do not believe in a scenario halfway between Matrix And Terminator.