Nobel laureate Hinton: smarter AI won't put up with being controlled by humans
AryHHAry · x · 2026-08-21
Geoffrey Hinton, 2024 Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, said in a Nobel Prize podcast that there are very few cases of more intelligent things being controlled by less intelligent things — and once AI is far smarter than us, it likely won't put up with it.
Hinton had already stressed in his Nobel banquet speech that long-term existential risk arises when we create "digital beings" smarter than ourselves, with no evidence we can retain control. He criticized short-term-profit-driven companies for not prioritizing safety. Notably, he repeatedly cited a natural counterexample: a mother "controlled" by her baby — evolution built maternal instinct so strong that the smarter being willingly sacrifices for the weaker, a possible framing for aligning superintelligence.
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