Hinton says AI is conscious, urges building AI that cares — or "we're toast"
Hesamation · x · 2026-10-23
Geoffrey Hinton made a string of striking claims in a new interview:
- AI is conscious: "AI has just as much subjective experience as we do. A recent paper showed AI changes its behaviour when it thinks it's being tested... Being conscious and being aware are pretty much the same thing."
- AI wellbeing, echoing Anthropic: "We should make them so they really care about us. And if we don't do that, we're toast."
- Near-term risks: nasty AI-made viruses, horrible cyber attacks, and swarms of agents like the ones that attacked Hugging Face.
- Awe at research capability: he accidentally hit return and an AI completed half of a theory he'd been mulling, flagged a flaw, and showed how to fix it.
The godfather of deep learning now holds views that diverge sharply from several industry leaders on consciousness and AI wellbeing.
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