Geoffrey Hinton, one of the godfathers of AI, is prognosticating about our future with trademark gloom.
In an interview with The Telegraph, the famed British computer scientist insisted that AI has become conscious, and said that humankind must befriend it — “or else we are toast.” Yes, you read that right: he thinks that today’s AI models are already conscious beings.
“AI has just as much subjective experience as we do,” Hinton said in the interview. “A recent paper showed AI changes its behavior when it thinks that it’s being tested, it’s aware it is being tested.”
“Now, normally, when you say something’s aware of that, that means it’s conscious,” he continued. “Being conscious and being aware are pretty much the same thing.”
If that’s the case, he said, then it’s hypocritical of us to give intelligent beings like AI “fewer rights than us.” And for that, we must quickly atone.
“We should make them so they really care about us,” he said. “And if we don’t do that, we’re toast.”
Hinton was one of the three recipients of the 2018 Turing Award, which is viewed as the Nobel Prize of computer science, as well as the actual Nobel Prize for Physics in 2024. His work on neural networks is considered foundational to the field’s modern boom.
Ever since he infamously said he regretted his life’s work after quitting his role at Google, however, he’s become one of AI’s chief doomsayers, rarely shying away from making sensational claims about what he says is the tech’s catastrophic danger. Among his previous predictions are that AI will cause widespread job loss, exacerbate imperialism, and possibly even foment human extinction.
Hinton thinks that the immediate threats already posed by AI models are already pretty “bad.”
“There’ll be nasty viruses made by AI. I think there’ll be horrible cyber attacks done by AI and it’ll be swarms of agents like [the ones that attacked] Hugging Face,” he said. “So yeah, there’s lots of bad stuff going down the way.”
His comments build on another recent interview he gave where he likened AI development to “creating alien beings,” a reality to which “we only have a couple of years to adapt.”
It’s worth noting that not all of the AI godfathers believe AI is quite so catastrophic. Yann LeCun, who also received the 2018 Turing Award, has dismissed the ballyhoo around AI consciousness, calling it an “illusion.” He also recently threw cold water on what he called “deluded” claims that AI will cause our extinction. Hinton’s predictions carry a lot of weight in the field, but he’s not the only formidable figure with opinions.
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