'Nobody knows if it can be in control': ‘Godfather’ of AI, China spy chief back AI slowdown calls, flags political threat

Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as the 'godfather of AI' has backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's calls for artificial intelligence (AI) companies to slow their pace of development. Hinton, a British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, told ABC Radio National Breakfast that Amodei's warning was “very sensible" and practically nobody knows if AI can ‘be kept under control.’ At the same time, China’s top intelligence official warned that abusive or weaponised artificial intelligence threatens the nation's political, institutional, and ideological security. Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, also commented on the matter and said that Anthropic CEO's details need refining, the "direction is correct" with respect to AI slowdown.

"Nobody knows how to estimate the probabilities of these things. [An Anthropic employee] said 10 per cent. Nobody really knows what figure to give. It's not 1 per cent, it's more than that, and it's not 99 per cent, it's less than that. But basically people are doing it on their gut feelings. Most experts believed AI super intelligence, systems smarter than humans, would arrive within a decade, and that nobody knew whether it could be kept under control. Until we've solved that problem, it would be foolish to develop them," Hinton said

Also Read: ‘Whoever wins AI wins’: Trump brushes off fears

What China’s top intelligence official warned?

State Security Minister Chen Yixin wrote in an article posted Sunday on the official China Cyberspace magazine said that abusive use of AI by adversaries could “directly threaten China’s political security, institutional security and ideological security.” He also cited AI’s increasing ability at discovering flaws in systems and creating malware or software to exploit those weaknesses.

Trump downplays concerns

Despite these earnings, UUS President Donald Trump downplayed the concerns. “Well, I say this, we’re leading China on AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world and frankly I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins,” Trump told reporters at his golf club in Doonbeg, Ireland, according to a White House pool report. “And we can put guardrails, and we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” he added.

What was the warning by Anthropic CEO?

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called on the artificial intelligence industry to slow the pace of AI development. Amodei outlined a three-part plan to slow the development of frontier AI while strengthening safety measures. As the first step, Anthropic will give third-party evaluators permanent, employee-level access to its AI systems so they can independently assess safety measures, report incidents and evaluate model alignment during training. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” he wrote. He said the development must be pursued carefully, particularly as similar advances are taking place across the industry, including at Anthropic. At the same time, a former Anthropic and OpenAI employee, Jacob Coxon, claimed in a post online that researchers at the firms “believe AI could kill all humans." Following the Anthropic CEO's post, Sam Altman said he agreed with the former on the “need to pace the frontier”, saying it was a primary topic of discussion at OpenAI in recent weeks. He further stamped his approval on Amodei's idea of independent evaluators being given employee-like access, adding, “we will do the same.” Musk, in a brief response, said, “Dario is right.”