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Geoffrey Hinton quote, May 15, 2025

Nobel laureate in Physics 2024, University of Toronto · May 15, 2025 · Interview, Nobel Prize Conversations podcast

I’m just worried by the fact that there’s very few cases of more intelligent things being controlled by less intelligent things.

Primary source

Words found on the source page on Sep 25, 2026.

More from Geoffrey Hinton

Quote
I think actually for fundamental original research, universities are better than the big companies.May 15, 2025· Interview
I think it may take up to 20 years, I’d say probably within the next 20 years they get smarter than us.May 15, 2025· Interview
My belief is that government’s the only people who are powerful enough to deal with these large companies and even they may not be.May 15, 2025· Interview
But we now have evidence that if they are created by companies motivated by short-term profits, our safety will not be the top priority. We urgently need research on how to prevent these new beings from wanting to take control. They are no longer science fiction.Dec 10, 2024· Keynote
In the near future AI may be used to create terrible new viruses and horrendous lethal weapons that decide by themselves who to kill or maim.Dec 10, 2024· Keynote
This new form of AI excels at modeling human intuition rather than human reasoning...Dec 10, 2024· Speech
There is also a longer term existential threat that will arise when we create digital beings that are more intelligent than ourselves. We have no idea whether we can stay in control.Dec 10, 2024· Speech
In particular with respect to the existential threat of these things getting out of control and taking over, I think we’re a kind of bifurcation point in history where in the next few years we need to figure out if there’s a way to deal with that threat.Dec 6, 2024· Interview

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The science of reading these thoughts is a subfield of AI interpretability, which is still in its infancy.Scott AlexanderSep 24, 2026· Post
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About this quote
Said by
Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel laureate in Physics 2024, University of Toronto
Where
Nobel Prize Conversations podcast
Topics
Safety
Source
nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2024/hinton/podcast/

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