Geoffrey Hinton called the “Godfather of AI,” acknowledged on Monday that he quit his position at Google last week in order to speak out against the “dangers” of the technology he helped to create.
Artificial intelligence systems that are the backbone of many modern products were shaped by Hinton’s groundbreaking work on neural networks. He spent a decade contributing to Google’s attempts to build artificial intelligence on a part-time basis, but he has since developed reservations about the field and his contribution to its growth.
“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” Hinton told the New York Times, which was first to report his decision.
Hinton claimed in a tweet on Monday that he left Google in order to talk openly about the dangers of AI rather than in order to particularly attack the company. “I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts…
