‘Godfather Of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton Rips Into Trump Over Artificial Intelligence

Famed computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the “Godfather of AI,” has spoken out against President Donald Trump‘s attempts to rebrand artificial intelligence as “superintelligence.”

Hinton, who made early contributions to AI at Google before leaving the company in 2013 to speak out about AI’s risks, was recently interviewed by The Guardian about the topic. During the interview, the outlet asked Hinton about Trump’s “superintelligence” rebrand of AI.

“Superintelligence means smarter than people, and has been around for at least 20 years. It’s got a very clear meaning,” Hinton said, noting that Trump’s attempts to use this term to describe AI prove he knows “almost nothing” about it.

He continued, “And now he says we’re going to call AI ‘superintelligence.’ You can’t make it smarter than people just by calling it smarter than people.”

Several AI company executives recently warned of the dangers AI could pose to humanity and petitioned Trump to implement guardrails. However, Trump brushed off these concerns and said the only thing needed to rein in AI is a “smart president.” He also made a deal with AI leaders to self-regulate.

Hinton, who called Trump “a corrupt, senile felon,” mocked the president’s actions. “I’m sure the oil and asbestos companies would have liked to [regulate themselves] as well,” he said. “Do we think tobacco companies should have been allowed to design the warnings on the packets? So that they could print them in a six-point font, in dark grey on black?”

Despite Trump playing down the threat of AI, Hinton reiterated that the risks are extremely high. “There’ve been three big revolutions where people ceased to be so important. The first was Copernicus, where we weren’t at the center of the universe anymore. How long did it take people to adapt to that?” he stated.

“It took the Catholic church nearly 360 years to apologize to Galileo. And Darwin? Well, there’s people in Kansas that still haven’t adapted to that one,” he added. “Now we’re creating alien beings – meaning we’re not the only intelligent beings around. And the reality is, we only have a couple of years to adapt to that.”