AI and Privacy

Spring 2023, there is a lot of "buzz" about AI and GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer). Almost daily there is a news item about the subject. However, the presenters don't seem to have a clue!

Dr. Geoffrey Hinton cannot be ignored in his indictment of the potential of AI. The automatic (Generative) retrieval of data from ALL databases current on the Internet is potentially dangerous in that this information will be available for misuse.

I have written before regarding how information found on Social Media seems to propagate without any control of those that placed in a public forum (the Internet). When I look at my "fake" Facebook account, where I have never made "friends" with anyone I get prompts and posts from people that I actually know but the connection was made by Facebook.

This can only get worse when AI really kicks in.

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The Social Plugin

Facebook’s Social Pluginis an example of this, one where I was concerned with Data Mining.

Backpropagation

What the .........!

In machine learning, backpropagation is a gradient computation method commonly used for training a neural network in computing parameter updates.

Geoffrey Hinton

What with all the hype about AI (2026) it is hard to make any sense of things!

Looking back on this page I see that I hadn't really followed up on Geoffrey Hinton. I anyone should know of what the perils are it is him! Some of what he was saying is what we are now hearing in the news. The trouble is that those that are reporting the news have no clue what AI is going to do apart from either saving the world or ending it.

The Wikipedia page on Geoffrey Hinton says:

Risks of artificial intelligence

In 2023, Hinton expressed concerns about the rapid progress of AI.[31][30] He had previously believed that artificial general intelligence (AGI) was "30 to 50 years or even longer away."[30] However, in a March 2023 interview with CBS, he said that "general-purpose AI" might be fewer than 20 years away and could bring about changes "comparable in scale with the industrial revolution or electricity."[31]

In an interview with The New York Times published on 1 May 2023,[30] Hinton announced his resignation from Google so he could "talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google."[108] He noted that "a part of him now regrets his life's work".[30][10]

In early May 2023, Hinton said in an interview with the BBC that AI might soon surpass the information capacity of the human brain. He described some of the risks posed by these chatbots as "quite scary". Hinton explained that chatbots can learn independently and share knowledge, so that whenever one copy acquires new information, it is automatically disseminated to the entire group, allowing AI chatbots to accumulate knowledge far beyond the capacity of any individual.[109] In 2025, he said "My greatest fear is that, in the long run, it'll turn out that these kind of digital beings we're creating are just a better form of intelligence than people. […] We'd no longer be needed. […] If you want to know how it's like not to be the apex intelligence, ask a chicken.

The Wikipedia page goes on to describe what Geoffrey says should be done (by the British government) - you should read it for yourself.

I am not sure who edited the Wikipedia page but there is a statement that Geoffrey is a socialist and moved from the US to Canada as he was disallusioned with Ronald Regan. I am not sure what that has got to do with the threat of Artificial Intelligence.

February 2026:
Demis Hassabis, Google Deepmind - OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman - Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, at the AI summit in New Delhi.

AI and Privacy

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