His remarks were made in a Toronto Tech Week panel with Nick Frosst, one of Hinton鈥檚 proteges and a co-founder of buzzy AI firm Cohere.
Their discussion was at the University of Toronto, where Hinton is a professor emeritus and Frosst was his student.
They鈥檝e remained close despite having diverging views on AI. For example, Hinton thinks AI poses an existential threat and Frosst isn鈥檛 convinced it does.
While they both agree the technology will upend the job market, they disagree about how.
Frosst said the large language models (LLMs) that underpin AI systems will automate 20-30% of everyone鈥檚 jobs done while sitting in front of a computer.
鈥淭he danger is when they do 80%,鈥 Hinton said.
鈥淚 think that鈥檚 where we disagree,鈥 Frosst replied. 鈥淚 think there鈥檚 a limit and I think there鈥檚 lots of work that we do now as people in our jobs and at our homes and in our personal lives that an LLM will not be able to do.鈥