'Godfather of AI' Hinton says recursive self-improvement should be illegal
Puzzleheaded-King584 · reddit · 2026-09-19
Geoffrey Hinton, often called the "Godfather of AI," argued in a video that recursive self-improvement — AIs creating their own successors — should be illegal. "Would we allow someone to do an experiment that could destroy the atmosphere, even if we aren't sure if it will work? No," he said.
It's another hardline statement from Hinton on AI loss-of-control risk, this time calling for an outright legal ban on frontier AI autonomously improving itself rather than relying on post-hoc regulation.
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