Smarter than Humans in 5 Years: The Rapid Advancement of AI

Geoffrey Hinton, often dubbed one of the “Godfathers of AI,” has been particularly outspoken since his retirement from Google earlier this year. He is credited with perfecting and popularizing “backpropagation,” a pivotal algorithm that enables multi-layer neural networks to correct their mistakes.

This breakthrough has been instrumental in the success of deep learning technologies, which are the backbone of today’s generative AI models. In recognition of his groundbreaking contributions, Hinton was honored with the Turing Award, often considered the Nobel Prize of computer science.

The pace of progress

Hinton transitioned from an AI optimist to more of an AI doomsayer when he realized that the time when AI could be smarter than people was not 50 to 60 years as he had thought but possibly within five years. Last spring, he warned about the potential existential threats posed by an AI that could soon be smarter than humans. The reason for his growing concern is the great leap seen with gen AI through large language models (LLM).

Five years from now is