AI Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton: AI Is Conscious, Superintelligence is Coming, And We Should Be Worried
6/3/202657 min
Geoffrey Hinton is an AI pioneer, a Nobel Prize winner, and a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. Hinton joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss AI’s rapid progress, why he believes today’s systems already understand us, and why he thinks superintelligence may arrive sooner than many expect. Tune in to hear Hinton explain why the technology has advanced faster than he anticipated, and lay out the risks he believes society is not doing enough to address. We also cover AI-driven job loss, the limits of corporate self-regulation, Anthropic and OpenAI’s safety challenges, emotional attachment to chatbots, information collapse, and whether future AI systems can be designed to care about humans. Hit play for a fascinating conversation with one of AI’s founding figures about where the technology is heading and what it could mean for all of us. Join the Big Technology AI Summit in San Francisco on June 18: summit.bigtechnology.com
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsGeoffrey Hinton· Guest0:00
We have to think that they're very like us.
Alex Kantrowitz· Host0:02
And therefore?
Geoffrey Hinton· Guest0:03
They're beings like us.
Alex Kantrowitz· Host0:05
So conscious or...?
Geoffrey Hinton· Guest0:07
Um, I believe they're already conscious, yes. We're gonna have to accept that intelligence isn't just biological. We can have things that are non-biological, that are other beings like us, and we really don't wanna share that. We, we really think we're special. And if you look back at humanity, humanity has this very long history of thinking it's much more special than it really is.
Alex Kantrowitz· Host0:31
Are you happy at all that what you started has progressed this way? Do you take any satisfaction?
Geoffrey Hinton· Guest0:36
No, I'm quite unhappy about it. Ask yourself, how many examples do you know of where a much smarter thing is controlled by a much less smart thing? Well, as I understand it, they have a fiducial duty to try and maximize the profits for shareholders. Um, they're legally required to try and do that, as opposed to legally required to not wipe out human, human beings.
Alex Kantrowitz· Host0:59
AI godfather Jeff Hinton joins us to talk about AI's trajectory, what surprised him about its progress, and of course, its risks. That's coming up on Big Technology Podcast right after this. I'm just back from ServiceNow's Knowledge 2026 in Las Vegas, and the conversations I had there are ones you're going to wanna hear. I sat down with their president and CPO, Amit Zavery, on the platform strategy powering enterprise AI, chief people and AI enablement officer, Jackie Canny, and chief digital information officer,