Hinton says humans perhaps should never have developed AI, warns of short-term accident risks
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Geoffrey Hinton, known as the "godfather of AI," told The Guardian that humanity might have been better off never developing AI. He also warned that a large-scale accident such as a temporary disruption of financial or power systems could occur this year or next. Hinton is a Nobel Prize laureate in Physics; this is his latest public statement on the consequences of AI, focusing on short-term systemic accident risks rather than only long-term existential threats. In response to Hinton's warning, a commentary article offers the opposite view: rather than AI continuing to evolve without obvious harmful consequences, a financial collapse might instead prompt humanity to abandon AI; the article also argues that AI safety and ethics initiatives merely delay small risks while allowing AI to become more deeply embedded in human society.
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- Hacker News AIDisaster is still better than AI
The author responds to Geoffrey Hinton's warning that AI could cause a large-scale incident such as a financial or power-system blackout, arguing that a visible disaster would be preferable to AI quietly becoming entrenched. He contends humans only respond to immediate pain, opposes ethical-AI and AI-safety initiatives as offsetting small dangers so AI embeds more deeply, and says even academic mathematics would benefit from being destroyed and rebuilt. He also argues tech CEOs, media and elites all have incentives to exaggerate how bad a disaster would be.
- Hacker News AIGeoffrey Hinton: it might turn out we were better off without AI
Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel prize-winning AI pioneer, told the Guardian that AI could trigger a large-scale incident this year or next, such as a temporary blackout of financial or power systems, and said "it might be that we would have been better off never developing it." He said he does not trust OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman "at all" and claimed Zuckerberg, Musk and Altman understand the risks but "don't give a shit" and "would rather have the money." Hinton backs mandatory testing of frontier AI models overseen by an independent authority, comparing it to the US FDA's drug approval process.
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