By Hamza Faisal

Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist widely known as one of the “godfathers of AI”, has said humanity might have been better off never developing artificial intelligence — and warned that a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl could strike as soon as this year or next.

Hinton, 78, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto whose work on neural networks underpins modern AI, made the remarks in an interview with The Guardian, published on November 3, ahead of a screening of a new documentary, AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About, featuring him and his former Google colleague Demis Hassabis.

He stressed that he is not a “doomer” and believes AI could still lead to a “wonderful future”. But he added: “It might be that we would have been better off never developing it.”

A “Chernobyl” moment for AI

Hinton predicted that “either later this year or next year we’ll see Chernobyl, and that may be enough to make people really pay attention.” He was not talking about a nuclear accident: he meant an AI-driven attack or failure that temporarily knocks out power grids or financial systems, an event on a scale that forces governments to act.

“Can you imagine what would happen? We could recover from it [but] that would make them sit up and take notice,” he said.

He said his “gut” feeling is that humanity is “still in control” of the technology — for now.

Ten years to decide AI’s future

Hinton said the next decade will show whether humanity can manage the risks of AI and unlock what he called “radical abundance” — or whether it fails, producing “a huge gap between rich and poor, huge cultural problems, massive unemployment, just society being torn apart”.

His proposed solution is a regulator modelled on the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which would check AI models for safety before they are released, rather than acting only after users complain.

He also criticised the leaders of the biggest AI companies, saying Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk “understand the risks, but they don’t care”, putting commercial interests ahead of safety. When asked which world leaders he trusts to handle AI, he replied: “World leaders other than Trump.”

Why his warning carries weight

Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for foundational work on machine learning, and he left Google in 2023 so he could speak freely about AI’s dangers. His warnings have grown sharper as AI systems have become more capable, and his latest comments land as governments and companies race to build ever-larger models and data centres.

The documentary featuring Hinton and Hassabis, AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About — a title suggested by an AI chatbot — airs on Channel 4 on November 12.

Whether Hinton’s “Chernobyl” prediction proves right or not, his message is clear: the window for putting safety checks in place before a crisis, rather than after one, is closing fast.