Back to Articles
Black Box: Episode 1 – The Connectionists

The Guardian

ENRICHED

Details

Date Published
4 Mar 2024
Priority Score
4
Australian
No
Created
24 Aug 2026, 06:02 am

Description

Revisited: Guardian journalist Michael Safi looks into the world of artificial intelligence, exploring the dangers and promises it holds for society

Summary

This investigation details the foundational work of Geoffrey Hinton and the evolution of connectionism, highlighting the emergence of neural networks that exceed their creators' full comprehension. The narrative underscores the growing concern regarding existential risks as these 'black box' systems develop capabilities that could potentially bypass human control or oversight. By tracing the transition from academic neuroscience to industry-leading frontier AI, the content provides critical context for global safety governance and the technical challenges of interpretability. The episode serves as a significant primer on why the opacity of advanced AI models represents a primary hurdle for catastrophic risk reduction.

Body

00:00:0000:00:00Black Box: episode 1 – The connectionists – podcastRevisited: Guardian journalist Michael Safi looks into the world of artificial intelligence, exploring the dangers and promises it holds for societyToday in Focus is on a summer break and will be back with new episodes from 1 September. In the meantime, we are bringing you season one of Black Box, before the launch of season two in early September. This episode was first broadcast on 4 March 2024.This is the story of Geoffrey Hinton, a man who set out to understand the brain and ended up working with a group of researchers who invented a technology so powerful that even they do not truly understand how it works. This is about a collision between two mysterious intelligences – two black boxes – human and artificial. And it is already having profound consequences. Photograph: The GuardianExplore more on these topicsAI (artificial intelligence)Today in FocusComputingNeuroscienceHuman biology