Photo credit: All photos Johnny Guatto.
Does artificial intelligence have subjective experience? Could AI outsmart and outmanoeuvre humans? What can Canada do to ensure it remains a leader in the global AI race that it helped kickstart?
These were some of the questions addressed by the University of Toronto’s Geoffrey Hinton — a University Professor Emeritus of computer science and recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics — during a recent lecture and fireside chat held at Convocation Hall during the inaugural Toronto Tech Week.
The Desjardins Speaker Series event saw the “godfather of AI” put forth two of his most compelling and controversial contentions: that large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and others understand language — rather than merely regurgitate it — and that AI could pose an existential risk to humanity.