In the year of 2024, Geoffrey Everest Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, also known as the “godfather of AI,” won the Nobel Prize in Physics. He was jointly awarded the prize with John Hopfield for their foundational work on artificial neural networks and machine learning. 

On Dec. 10, Hinton gave his Nobel Prize banquet speech. What he presented wasn’t a typical appreciation speech; instead, it was a warning that AI is no longer just a tool that will increase productivity, but a rapidly progressing technology that poses many “short-term risks.” Hinton’s speech is remarkable not only for its gravity but for its source. When the “godfather of AI” steps onto one of the world’s most respected stages and uses his moment to warn us and not celebrate, it becomes impossible to simply dismiss these concerns as mere online speculation. 

Part of what makes Hinton’s warning so important is that he talks about both the scientific and political aspects of AI development. These systems have already reshaped information ecosystems, national security, and cybercrime. Soon, he argues, they could play a role in developing “terrible new viruses and horrendous lethal weapons that decide by themselves who to kill or maim.” This is where the conversation gets genuinely unsettling. Right now there is enough information to provide evidence that in a couple of decades or even less, AI will be advanced to the point where they can—in a nutshell—decide who to eliminate.

And then there’s the long-term threat: the possibility of creating digital intelligences that surpass human capabilities. This isn’t just about computers getting faster or AI models becoming more accurate; it’s about the moment when intelligent systems can think, learn, plan and make decisions in ways that outpace us entirely. Hinton warns that once AI reaches this level, we may not have reliable methods to predict its behavior or ensure that we can still control it. 

Hinton’s purpose is not to scare, but to wake people up. In the future, if businesses that are motivated by short-term profits start creating these “digital beings”, no one can say for sure that citizens’ safeties will be put first. The technology is here, it’s accelerating, and as Hinton put it, “They are no longer science fiction.”