Nobel prize laureate Geoffrey Hinton took the stage at AI Sweden event

An audience of high-level decision-makers and leading AI scientists from AI Sweden’s partners were given the special chance to hear professor Hinton reflect both on his work on neural networks in the 1980s as well as more recent development in the field – and what they mean to society at large. 

When asked if there are missing components for reaching human-level AI, Hinton answered:

“Nothing that is crucial. We may hit a limit where we run out of training data, but then what we can do is get them to do reasoning and generate their own training data, much like AlphaGo plays against itself and generates training data.”

One question from the audience touched upon this rapid development and the ever-changing landscape organisations that want to use AI in their businesses have to orient themselves in. “Hang on, you're complaining that we keep doing new things,” professor Hinton joked before addressing the question.

“It used to be that you could make some nice product and then just rake in the profits for the next 20 years. And it isn't gonna be like that. It's gonna be that you have to be agile and just assume you're gonna get your profits over [just] a few years.”

The discussion further addressed professor Hinton's concerns about AI safety. He expressed frustration with journalists who conflate different types of risks. He also elaborated on his belief that regulatory pressure must be applied to the largest AI labs, compelling them to invest more in this area.

Professor Hinton shared that while some challenges need to be addressed with huge resources and international cooperation, there are others he believes to be more easily solved. Such as how to ensure privacy when training models on sensitive data.

The panel that followed delved into the impact of AI on society, noting the important contributions research brings while underlining the need for involving both industry and the public sector.

Highlighted quotes from the panelists