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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Leyland Cecco in Toronto

AI godfather Geoffrey Hinton: ‘We’re creating alien beings. I’m willing to be selfish and choose humans’

Geoffrey Hinton, an older man in a sweater and button-down shirt, poses outside in his yard in Toronto in front of a brick wall
‘We’re creating alien beings … and the reality is we only have a couple of years to adapt to that’ … computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton in Toronto, Ontario. Photograph: Cole Burston/The Guardian

Donald Trump is a “corrupt, senile felon” whose fixation on the term superintelligence proves he knows nothing about AI, said Geoffrey Hinton, “godfather” of the technology, in a wide-ranging interview where he doubled down on recent warnings that AI models pose an existential threat to humanity and scoffed at claims the industry could regulate itself.

The pioneering computer scientist, whose work helped lay the foundations of modern AI, has since become one of the technology’s most vocal critics. His latest remarks come after a tumultuous month during which a growing list of senior AI scientists and researchers have joined Hinton in ringing the alarm about how the technology he helped create could ultimately escape human control, sparking an industry crisis, the hasty assembly of congressional meetings and a rare global consensus that something must be done.

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