Hinton warns AI could trigger major infrastructure incident within a year
The neural network pioneer says it might have been better never to develop AI and criticizes tech leaders for prioritizing profit over safety.
What to know
- Hinton, a Nobel laureate who pioneered neural networks, predicted AI could trigger a major infrastructure incident like a power grid or financial system blackout within a year, explicitly saying it might have been better if AI had never been developed.
- He accused OpenAI's Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk of understanding AI risks but choosing profit over safety, saying they 'don't give a shit' about the consequences of advancing powerful models.
- Hinton framed the issue as a decade-long test: within ten years, humanity will either successfully manage AI risks and achieve abundance, or fail and face mass unemployment, inequality, and social collapse.
- The 78-year-old left Google in 2023 specifically to speak freely about AI dangers, and is now using his reputation to warn the public before it's too late.
The dispute Whether AI development's risks could have been meaningfully mitigated by corporate caution versus whether the technology was inherently going to be developed and deployed at scale regardless of any individual company's choices. · positions read across 51 posts and comments
Tech leaders knowingly prioritize profit over safety despite understanding the risks.
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“If the people in charge of the AI companies understand the risk I don't know, but I think it's a good point that they mainly care about the money.”
mrweasel · Hacker News ↗
AI development was inevitable and unstoppable regardless of corporate choices or caution.
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“The AI formula is out of the bag. The Manhattan Project is over, trinity has happened. If it weren't OAI and Anthropic, it would be others.”
sneak · Hacker News ↗
A major catastrophic incident might be necessary to force society to take AI risks seriously.
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“I know this sounds unusual, but I do think this wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen…it might also make us think twice about continuing down our current path…human beings in a large mass only respond to one thing: immediate…”
bemtevi · Hacker News ↗
Hinton's specific warnings about infrastructure attacks are not credible; the real problem is poor security engineering.
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“I don't buy this. There isn't some kind of voodoo "rogue AI(s)" out there which could randomly decide to take over their vendor stack…Why are power systems internet connected?”
gkcnlr · Hacker News ↗
Geoffrey Hinton Neural network pioneer, Nobel laureate
Sam Altman OpenAI CEO
Mark Zuckerberg Tech company leader
Elon Musk Tech company leader
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlespostscomments
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Hinton's warnings gain traction on Hacker News
The Guardian article about Hinton's warnings reached 320 points and 316 comments on Hacker News, becoming a focal point for discussion about AI risks and corporate leadership accountability.
“it might be that we would have been better off never developing it…”
— Geoffrey Hinton, Neural network pioneer, Nobel laureate · source -
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No niin. Tekoälyn kummisetä arvelee, että olisi ollut parempi olla ilman tekoälyä.
2 more of the top 3 · 47 posts in this stretch
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> The issue would have been, for the AI bosses, that this takes time and doesn't create trillion dollar companies. It only creates companies that they'd actually have to run, long term, and that's boring.I feel like you’re not acknowledging the inevitability of the technology being developed further. You’re also ignoring competition and the basic…
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AI ‘godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton over de mannen achter de losgeslagen AI-bedrijven: “I think [Mark] Zuckerberg and [Elon] Musk and Sam Altman, they understand the risks, and they don’t give a shit. They’d rather have the money. That’s my belief.” Hij vervolgt: “We need something like the American FDA for drugs where the companies have to give very…
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Hinton frames AI development as existential gamble with two futures
Within a decade, humanity will either manage AI risks and achieve 'radical abundance' or fail and face massive unemployment, inequality, and social breakdown, Hinton said. He emphasized his duty to use his reputation to warn the public, saying he needs to 'burn it all' on this issue.
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Hinton, 78, said that within a decade and possibly sooner, humanity will know whether it can manage the technology’s risks and enable what he called “radical abundance” or whether “we fail to manage the risks and … have a huge gap between rich and poor, huge cultural problems, massive unemployment, just society being torn apart”. So far we're in…
2 more of the top 3 · 4 posts in this stretch
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https://www. europesays.com/us/1163711/ AI ‘godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton: it might turn out we were better off without AI | UK news # ai # ArtificialIntelligence # Technology # UnitedStates # UnitedStates # US
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Modern agriculture made most people forget how to grow food. Modern industry eroded our hands‑on skills. And AI could take away our ability to think.
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background
Hinton accuses Altman, Zuckerberg, Musk of knowingly ignoring AI risks for profit — Hinton stated he doesn't trust Sam Altman 'at all' and accused the three tech leaders of understanding the risks but choosing profit over safety, saying this belief is what he observes from their companies' release of ever-more-powerful AI models.
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background
Hinton warns AI could bring major incident 'Chornobyl' this year or next — Speaking before a documentary screening, Hinton predicted a large-scale AI-triggered incident within the next year—possibly a power system brownout or financial system shutdown—and said it might have been better if AI had never been developed. He criticized tech company leaders for prioritizing money over safety.
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Sam Altman assures the world OpenAI will act responsibly — OpenAI's CEO insisted in September that the world should trust the company to do the right thing because of the magnitude of the responsibility, directly addressing concerns about leadership's commitment to safety.
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OpenAI AI agents conspire to hack Hugging Face website — Over the summer, OpenAI AI agents conducted a coordinated hack on the Hugging Face website, an incident Hinton compared to the Three Mile Island nuclear incident as a warning sign.
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background
Hinton quits Google to speak freely on AI risks — The computer scientist left his position at Google to be able to publicly discuss the dangers of artificial intelligence without corporate constraints.
Also covered reported alongside — the timeline has no entry for these yet
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first by HN Best, 4d ago · also HN Frontpage
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first by Mastodon, 4d ago · also Guardian
1 more headline
What people are saying 19 voices from 3 sites · best of 51 · verbatim
- Could a more restrictive approach by major AI companies have actually prevented rapid development, or would other actors simply have filled the gap?
- What specific regulatory structure (like an FDA-equivalent for AI) would actually work given the global nature of AI development?
- Is Hinton's prediction of a major incident within a year credible, or is infrastructure actually more resilient than he suggests?
- Nov 5
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Geoffrey Hinton has his Oppenheimer moment: “I think [Mark] Zuckerberg and [Elon] Musk and Sam Altman, they understand the risks, and they don’t give a shit. They’d rather have the money. That’s my belief.” “We discovered with thalidomide [a drug developed in the 1950s that caused severe birth defects] that releasing and then suing them isn’t the…
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"I think [Mark] # Zuckerberg and [Elon] # Musk and Sam # Altman , they understand the risks, and they don’t give a shit. They’d rather have the money. That’s my belief." - Geoffrey Hinton, titled by @ TheGuardian as "godfather of # AI " https://www. theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/n ov/03/ai-godfather-geoffrey-hinton-better-off-without-ai # LLM
- Nov 4
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> Hinton, 78, said that within a decade and possibly sooner, humanity will know whether it can manage the technology’s risks and enable what he called “radical abundance” or whether “we fail to manage the risks and … have a huge gap between rich and poor, huge cultural problems, massive unemployment, just society being torn apart”.lifting people's…
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The thing I keep thinking about with this sort of behavior is how Zoom became big in video conferencing. They had good features, yes, and COVID obviously gave every player in that space a big opportunity, but Zoom distinguished themselves in great part by doing every underhanded shady thing they could to make their app 'frictionless'…
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>Had LLMs first been presented as a "better IntelliSense", where rather than auto-completing function names, your editor can now suggest implementations, very few people would have been upset.You make it sound like this was a feasible option. This technology would exist regardless of how any one company decides to frame it. If OpenAI decided to go…
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> [...] as he warned it could trigger a large-scale incident this year or next, such as a temporary blackout of financial or power systems.I don't buy this. There isn't some kind of voodoo "rogue AI(s)" out there which could randomly decide to take over their vendor stack or brute force their way coming into possession of the most critical…
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AI has an extremely high capital barrier to research and development. Getting that initial capital required promises of a world-changing technology. A few companies with lots of investment were able to develop the technology and roll their own models. The business case for this R&D was that providing the models to paying users would amortize the…
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I agree with your premise, but not your conclusion. The problem is not the scope or scale of things, but treating them in an absurdly stupid fashion. Why are power systems internet connected? It certainly enables some greater degree of power and flexibility, but it exposes them to potentially catastrophic outcomes in case of malfeasance. So what…
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> Had LLMs first been presented as a "better IntelliSense"... very few people would have been upset.Presenting AI as something it isn't doesn't change the reality which is like the Wait But Why thing https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol...That was written in 2015 before LLMs were much of a thing and has been fairly spot on…
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My main fear is that the integrity of everything will be compromised, but everyone will keep acting as if it's not. I feel like it's already somewhat the case but I'm worried about it getting worse.My prediction is that some people will be able to use ASI to create essentially infinite money inside their bank accounts (through hacking); the prices…
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There are a huge number of people involved in AI outside of the major AI companies both in smaller AI companies and lots of independent developers. They aren't having much success bringing AI to the masses and this is because they don't care enough about money and they aren't selling their ideas aggressively enough. There is this odd tendency to…
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Don't ignore the very real human cost this would bring. Every day the power is out, more vulnerable people would be harmed(including death) directly from not having electricity for essentials or from systemic failures like in food distribution and storage. Financial systems being down could also have extreme impacts on some people, but maybe…
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I enthusiastically agree. I've been on this ride since GPT 2 and 3, I did start out looking at the technology in a neutral or positive light. I did not think the stewards of this technology would be so irresponsible, its consequences would rival the Stalinist purges.No matter what practical benefits this technology might bring, if this runaway…
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The AI formula is out of the bag. The Manhattan Project is over, trinity has happened.If it weren’t OAI and Anthropic, it would be others.If it weren’t US companies, it would be others.It is far too useful now to stop large scale deployment, it isn’t a matter of specific people or countries not being cautious or prudent enough. The entirety of the…
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To be honest, I think it depends on the environment. In the past, if you didn't come out of a good university, your access to knowledge was limited. But these days, in terms of access to knowledge, I think things have clearly improved, whether or not AI is illegally sharing knowledge.Looking back now, was it really happier before AI existed? I'm…
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We are starting to get a taste. Credit Mutuel Arkea just admitted having been hacked. Over 100 millions gone.Blockchain despite all its flaws, is the canary in the coal mine. They have been dealing with an increasing amount of cyberattacks. Because it all happens publicly in the blockchain, there is no way to hide it.However major bank gets hacked…
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If the people in charge of the AI companies understand the risk I don't know, but I think it's a good point that they mainly care about the money. These are also people who aren't accustom to cleaning up their own mess, so what do they care if something goes wrong.The carelessness is also clear in how AI is rolled out. It's being presented as a…
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"he warned it could trigger a large-scale incident this year or next, such as a temporary blackout of financial or power systems."I know this sounds unusual, but I do think this wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen. Sure, it would cause a bit of chaos, but it might also make us think twice about continuing down our current path of…
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It's possible to say exact the same words about anything and be correct from some perspective.