Bernie Sanders, Elon Musk, the White House… Since resigning from Google and warning of the dangers of AI, Geoffrey Hinton has been inundated with interview requests. A success that makes this socialist question: will they be willing to listen to what he has to say?

His phone rings every two minutes and his mailbox beeps. Ever since he gave the warning in the columns of New York Times Earlier this week on the dangers of AI, Geoffrey Hinton is oversold. Billionaire Elon Musk, US Senator Bernie Sanders, the White House… Everyone wants to know more about the thinking of this 75-year-old man, Report this Thursday Guardian. Unsurprisingly, the researcher, who recently left Google, is one of the founding fathers of AI.

AIs will be smarter than humans, spread a lot of misinformation, destroy many jobs, encourage the emergence of autonomous killer robots… After almost fifty years of studying the human brain to develop high-performance digital brains, the psychologist and IT specialist trains New York Times Tuesday a long list of his concerns. And regret. Vicinity Guardianhe continues, still alarmist: “The reason I’m not so optimistic is because I don’t know of any examples of smarter things being controlled by less smart things.”

These concerns are also shared by those in power who have contacted him. Elon Musk, for example, is among the signatories to an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on new system development due to the “Great risk to humanity” that they would represent. Meanwhile, socialist Bernie Sanders is toying with the idea of ​​a tax on robots responsible for job cuts.

Finally, this Thursday, the White House is organizing a meeting on this topic with Google, Microsoft, OpenAi and Anthropic around a table. “Our goal is to have an open discussion about the current and near-term risks we see in AI developments.”, states the invitation consulted by AFP on Tuesday. And so consider “Steps to mitigate those risks and other ways we can work together to ensure the American people benefit from advances in AI while protecting them from harm.”.

“I am a socialist”

Everyone seems to agree in principle to think about the dangers now. But what about the rest? Geoffrey Hinton plays the cards on the table Guardian : He is a socialist. “I don’t think private media ownership is good”, he explains. So where the US Department of Defense might consider sole control of AI-powered military technology as a solution, he winces in fear. “The US government inevitably has many national security concerns. And I tend to disagree with him.” he agrees Guardian.

The British researcher, who lives in exile in Canada, does not hesitate to offer his analysis of the position of his former employer. “When you see what Google is doing in the context of a capitalist system, it is behaving as responsibly as you might expect. he emphasizes with clarity. But that doesn’t mean he’s trying to maximize benefit for everyone: he has a legal obligation to maximize benefit for his shareholders, and that’s quite another matter.”

What has to be done now ? Unfortunately, Geoffrey Hinton runs out of solutions to deploy: “I’m not a politician”, he is arguing. With emphasis: “I’m just someone who suddenly realizes there’s danger […]. I wish I had a good solution like, “Just stop burning carbon and you’ll be fine.” But I don’t see such a simple solution.” Let’s hope that his talks at the summit will result in concrete action.