Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, often called the 'Godfather of AI', has warned there is a '10 percent chance' artificial intelligence could 'kill all humans' in the next decade, leaving BBC presenter Victoria Derbyshire speechless.
Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2024, appeared on Newsnight on Wednesday (September 9) following claims by former AI company employee Jacob Coxon that there is a 10 percent chance AI could 'kill all humans within a decade'.
Hinton's Chilling Estimate
Quizzed by Derbyshire on how accurate Coxon's claims were, Hinton initially said it was 'very hard to estimate' if the software could destroy all human life by 2036, and warned engineers should be 'cautious'.
But, much to Derbyshire's astonishment, he added: "It would be foolish to say there's a one percent chance. Nobody knows how to estimate it. A 10 percent chance seems not unreasonable to me."
One-Word Answer Stuns Presenter
The veteran presenter then asked Hinton: "You just said that 10 percent doesn't seem an unreasonable estimate that AI could kill all humans."
His one-word answer initially left her speechless. "Yes," he replied.
After a pause, Derbyshire exclaimed: "Wow. Oh my God." She then pressed the scientist, who resigned from a position at Google in 2023 to allow him to sound the alarm about AI's progress, on how the software can end thousands of years of human society.
Ways AI Could Cause Devastation
Chillingly, he replied: "If it's much smarter than us there are so many ways I do not think it's worth speculating."
Pressed again, he went further: "It does not even have to act in the real world to cause devastation. It can cause complete chaos by talking to people.
"It can design very nasty biological and computer viruses. It could do devastating cyber attacks and there's countless other ways to get rid of us, if it wanted to.
"We have to figure out how to design it so it does not want to."
It is not the first time Hinton has produced similar warnings, first sounding the alarm over AI's military potential shortly after he left Google.
