Generative AI is also the business of philosophers – Libération

While the Nobel Prize in physics has just been awarded to the two pioneers of machine learning, one of whom warned of the dangers of the development of generative AI, what humanity do we want? Philosophers must participate in global ethical reflection alongside computer scientists, lawyers, economists, according to philosopher Elsa Godart.

The Nobel Prize in Physics has just been awarded on October 8, 2024 to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their work on “machine learning” which made it possible to develop the deep learning – “deep learning” – which characterizes generative AI systems. “In the same circumstances, I would do the same thing [ses recherches, ndlr]. But I fear that the overall consequence of all this will be systems smarter than us, eventually taking control,” admitted Hinton when his award was announced. After working for Google (Google Brain) for around ten years, he left the firm in 2023 in order to be able to speak freely about the risks caused by AI.

In an interview with CBS on March 25, 2023, he did not hesitate to affirm “that it is not inconceivable that AI could wipe out humanity.” In 2017, he already called for an international ban on lethal autonomous weapons. And since then, he has continued to campaign so that a major reflection can be carried out concerning the control of generative AI. In the same movement of concern, the international dialogue on AI security (Idais) was launched in October 2023 by two Turing Prize winners, Yoshua Be