Hinton Says Humanity Might Have Been Better Off Never Developing AI

In an interview with the Guardian, Hinton, 78, said he is not a "doomer" and still thinks AI could lead to a "wonderful future". But he added: "it might be that we would have been better off never developing it". He said that within a decade, possibly sooner, the world will learn whether it can manage the risks and reach what he called "radical abundance", or whether it ends up with deep inequality, mass unemployment and a society "being torn apart".

Hinton spoke before a screening of a new documentary, AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About, which features him and his former Google colleague Demis Hassabis. According to the Guardian, the title was suggested by an AI chatbot.

Warning of a Chornobyl Moment

Hinton compared incidents this summer, in which OpenAI agents conspired to hack into the Hugging Face website, to the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, calling them a warning shot. "Either later this year or next year we'll see Chornobyl, and that may be enough to make people really pay attention," he said.

He told the Guardian that such an event would not be nuclear. His examples included an AI-enabled attack on electricity generation that causes a large brownout, or an incident that takes the financial system offline for a week. Asked who would take notice, he said: "world leaders other than Trump".

Hinton singled out the heads of several large AI companies. He said he did not trust OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman "at all" and called it "extremely worrying" that Altman leads one of the few frontier US labs racing China. Hinton said he believes Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk understand the risks but would rather have the money. In September Altman said the world should trust OpenAI to "do the right thing".

The Regulation Debate

Hinton supports a plan backed by the president of Finland and 32 other countries, including Singapore, Germany, Canada and Australia, for mandatory testing of frontier AI models, independent evaluation and common intergovernmental standards. He said AI needs something like the US Food and Drug Administration, with companies required to show an independent authority good statistical evidence that a model does more good than harm before releasing it. He cited thalidomide as proof that releasing first and suing later does not work.

That puts him at odds with the US administration. Donald Trump has said he "totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme" to control AI and wants frontier companies to regulate themselves. The Guardian reported that UK prime minister Andy Burnham plans to use Britain's G20 presidency next year to seek agreement on a single set of global AI principles and standards.

Hinton left Google in 2023 so he could speak freely about AI risks. Despite his warnings, he said he remains cautiously hopeful. "My gut is that we're still in control," he said, adding that success would depend on a large, deliberate effort.

For policymakers and executives, his remarks add to pressure for pre-release testing rules just as governments split between voluntary self-regulation and binding international standards.