‘Soon anyone can make...': Godfather of AI has chilling doomsday warning

Geoffrey Hinton, often hailed as the "Godfather of AI," has a chilling warning about the technology he helped pioneer. Once a driving force behind AI’s rapid rise, Hinton has now flipped sides—sounding the alarm that artificial intelligence could soon spell disaster for humanity.

According to Hinton, AI may soon give ordinary people the tools to create nuclear bombs or even deadly bioweapons. “A normal person assisted by AI will soon be able to build bioweapons—and that is terrible,” he cautioned. “Imagine if the average person in the street could make a nuclear bomb.”

The AI trailblazer didn’t stop there. He warned that machines could eventually surpass human intelligence in manipulation and emotional control, learning to sway human thoughts and behaviours more effectively than people themselves.

Hinton also opened up about his own AI experiences—including the surprising admission that a chatbot even played a role in his recent breakup.

At the heart of his concern is the belief that AI is not just a tool, but intelligent in its own right. “If you talk to these things and ask them questions, it understands,” Hinton said firmly, adding that the pace of AI development leaves little doubt machines will continue getting smarter.

Not everyone agrees. His fellow Turing Award laureate Yann LeCun, now Meta’s chief AI scientist, argues that today’s large language models are far more limited than Hinton suggests and lack the ability to meaningfully interact with the real world.

This is not the first time that Hinton has voiced concern over the evolution of AI technology.

In the past Hinton regretted overlooking the dangers of AI. “I should have realised much sooner what the eventual dangers were going to be. I always thought the future was far off and I wish I had thought about safety sooner,” he once said.

While speaking One Decision podcast earlier, Hinton said top figures in the tech industry are aware of AI’s dangers but are not openly addressing them. “Many of the people in big companies, I think, are downplaying the risk publicly,” he said. “People like Demis, for example, really do understand the risks and really want to do something about it.”