AI showing signs of self-preservation and humans should be ready to pull plug, says pioneer

Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian professor of computing, says the idea that chatbots are becoming conscious is ‘going to drive bad decisions’. Photograph: The Canadian Press/Alamy

A pioneer of AI has criticised calls to grant the technology rights, warning that it was showing signs of self-preservation and humans should be prepared to pull the plug if needed.

Yoshua Bengio said giving legal status to cutting-edge AIs would be akin to giving citizenship to hostile extraterrestrials, amid fears that advances in the technology were far outpacing the ability to constrain them.