Disaster is still better than AI

Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton warned that AI could trigger a large-scale incident within the next year or two, such as a temporary blackout of financial or power systems, and suggested humanity might have been better off never developing the technology. The article argues that such a disruption would be the least troubling outcome compared with the alternative: AI continuing to advance without any obvious catastrophe, locking the world into pervasive AI use, heavy energy consumption, the erosion of intellectual communities, and the eventual displacement of nature. Hinton, who shared the Nobel prize in physics for neural network research, made the comments in an interview with The Guardian. The piece also characterizes the mainstream media response as focusing on risks, irresponsible tech CEOs and politicians, and calls for regulation. What to watch next is whether Hinton's predicted grid or financial-system incident materializes, and whether regulators act on those warnings.