Hinton warns US Congress: only one year left to regulate AI

Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize winner known as the "godfather of AI," has warned US lawmakers that they may have only about a year left to build effective regulations for artificial intelligence. After briefing US congressmembers on September 16, Hinton said AI is advancing faster than many researchers expected, and the window for regulation is shrinking quickly.

Hinton noted that estimates for when superintelligence might arrive have shifted from decades to just a few years. He warned that AI has reached a stage where it can design more advanced AI, and without action, it could spiral out of control.

Hinton also mentioned the recent Hugging Face incident, calling it "a small Chernobyl moment," saying it shows frontier AI systems are becoming harder to control. He stressed that before pushing ahead with advanced AI, researchers must first figure out how to keep these systems under control.