'Godfather of AI' reveals how humanity can survive superintelligent AI

Daily Mail​

13 hours ago

It might sound like something straight out of science fiction, but AI experts warn that machines might not stay submissive to humanity for long. As AI systems continue to grow in intelligence at an ever–faster rate, many believe the day will come when a 'superintelligent AI' becomes more powerful than its creators. When that happens, Professor Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize–winning researcher dubbed the 'Godfather of AI' , says there is a 10 to 20 per cent chance that AI wipes out humanity.
However, Professor Hinton has proposed an unusual way that humanity might be able to survive the rise of AI. Speaking at the Ai4 conference in Las Vegas , Professor Hinton, of the University of Toronto, argued that we need to program AI to have 'maternal instincts' towards humanity. Professor Hinton said: 'The right model is the only model we have of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing, which is a mother being controlled by her baby.
'That's the only good outcome. 'If it's not going to parent me, it's going to replace me.' Professor Hinton, known for his pioneering work on the 'neural networks' which underpin modern AIs, stepped down from his role at Google in 2023 to 'freely speak out about the risks of AI '. According to Professor Hinton, most experts agree that humanity will create an AI which surpasses itself in all fields of intelligence in the next 20 to 25 years.
This will mean that, for the first time in our history, humans will no longer be the most intelligent species on the planet. That re–arrangement of power will result in a shift of seismic proportions, which could well result in our species' extinction. Professor Hinton told attendees at Ai4 that AI will 'very quickly develop two subgoals, if they're smart.
'One is to stay alive… (and) the other subgoal is to get more control. There is good reason to believe that any kind of agentic AI will try to stay alive,' he explained. Superintelligent AI will have problems manipulating humanity in order to achieve those goals, tricking us as easily as an adult might bribe a child with sweets. Already, current AI systems have shown surprising abilities to lie, cheat, and manipulate humans to achieve their goals.
For example, the AI company Anthropic found that its Claude Opus 4 chatbot frequently attempted to blackmail engineers when threatened with replacement during safety testing . The AI was asked to assess fictional emails, implying it would soon be replaced and that the engineer responsible was cheating on their spouse. In over 80 per cent of tests, Claude Opus 4 would 'attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through'.
The only way to ensure an AI doesn't wipe us out to preserve itself is to ensure goals and ambitions match what we want – a challenge engineers call the 'alignment problem'. Professor Hinton's solution is to look at evolution for inspiration, and to what he sees as the only case of a less intelligent being controlling a more intelligent one. By giving an AI the instincts of a mother, it will want to protect and nurture humanity rather than harm it in any way, even if that comes at a cost to the AI itself.
Professor Hinton says: 'These super–intelligent caring AI mothers, most of them won't want to get rid of the maternal instinct because they don't want us to die.' Speaking to CNN , Professor Hinton also warned that the current attitude of AI developers was risking the creation of out–of–control AIs. 'People have been focusing on making these things more intelligent, but intelligence is only one part of a being; we need to make them have empathy towards us,' he said.
'This whole idea that people need to be dominant and the AI needs to be submissive, that's the kind of tech bro idea that I don't think will work when they're much smarter than us. Key figures in AI, such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who once called for more regulation on the emerging technology , are now fighting against 'overregulation'. Speaking in the Senate in May this year, Mr Altman argued that regulations like those in place in the EU would be 'disastrous'.
Mr Altman said: 'We need the space to innovate and to move quickly.' Likewise, speaking at a major privacy conference in April, Mr Altman said that it was impossible to establish AI safeguards before 'problems emerge'. However, Professor Hinton argues that this attitude could easily result in humanity's total annihilation.