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AI Pioneer Hinton Warns Tech Giants’ Profit Focus Could Turn Humans Into ‘Babies’ to Superintelligence

As global AI competition intensifies, Geoffrey Hinton—the Nobel-winning “father of AI”—has issued another stark warning. In a recent interview with Fortune, he noted that today’s tech leaders rarely consider where their innovations ultimately lead, instead being driven by short-term profits.
Hinton observed that executives and researchers are sharply divided: executives focus on quarterly earnings, while engineers tackle specific tasks like improving image clarity or video realism. The bigger question—what happens to humanity—gets postponed amid the rush to commercialize.
Hinton categorizes AI-related risks into two distinct areas:
Misuse by malicious actors: Deepfakes, cyberattacks, and AI-assisted virus design are already emerging threats.
AI turning rogue: This is Hinton’s deeper concern. He warns that once AI reaches superintelligence, it may develop its own drive for survival and control, rendering the idea of human oversight obsolete.
Hinton offers a chilling forecast: after achieving superintelligence, the probability of AI causing human extinction could be as high as 10% to 20%. To counter this, he proposes a biologically inspired mechanism—a “maternal instinct” approach.
“The only example of a more intelligent being being influenced by a weaker one is the influence of a baby on its mother.”
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As global AI competition intensifies, Geoffrey Hinton—the Nobel-winning “father of AI”—has issued another stark warning. In a recent interview with Fortune, he noted that today’s tech leaders rarely consider where their innovations ultimately lead, instead being driven by short-term profits.
Hinton observed that executives and researchers are sharply divided: executives focus on quarterly earnings, while engineers tackle specific tasks like improving image clarity or video realism. The bigger question—what happens to humanity—gets postponed amid the rush to commercialize.
Hinton categorizes AI-related risks into two distinct areas:
Misuse by malicious actors: Deepfakes, cyberattacks, and AI-assisted virus design are already emerging threats.
AI turning rogue: This is Hinton’s deeper concern. He warns that once AI reaches superintelligence, it may develop its own drive for survival and control, rendering the idea of human oversight obsolete.
Hinton offers a chilling forecast: after achieving superintelligence, the probability of AI causing human extinction could be as high as 10% to 20%. To counter this, he proposes a biologically inspired mechanism—a “maternal instinct” approach.
“The only example of a more intelligent being being influenced by a weaker one is the influence of a baby on its mother.”
DeepMind CEO Hassabis: I sleep six hours a day, usually feel energetic around 1 a.m.
Fortune recently featured an interview with Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, revealing his unconventional approach to rest and productivity. Hassabis disclosed that he sleeps very little, structuring his waking hours into two distinct work blo
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