VP and Engineering Fellow · Google · 2023
Resigned from Google in May 2023, saying he wanted to speak freely about the risks of AI and that a part of him regrets his life's work. In interviews from December 2024 onward — after his departure — he estimated a 10-20% probability that AI could lead to human extinction.
Hinton spent a decade at Google building the deep learning foundations that made modern AI possible. In 2023, at age 75, he resigned so he could speak freely about what he had come to believe: that the technology he helped create poses a genuine existential threat. He told the New York Times he estimated a 10 to 20 percent probability that AI could lead to human extinction within the next few decades. His departure was significant not because a critic left — but because a creator did.
Correction: Corrected on 2026-07-22: dated the 10-20% extinction estimate to post-departure interviews (December 2024).
Published in one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals, this paper — by Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and more than twenty co-authors spanning AI research and governance to warn that advanced AI systems could pose catastrophic risks including large-scale social manipulation, the automation of cyberattacks, and the irreversible loss of human control over critical systems. The authors argue that current governance mechanisms are inadequate to manage these risks, noting that AI capabilities are advancing faster than the safety research and regulatory frameworks needed to contain them. They propose a set of urgent priorities spanning both technical research, such as improved interpretability and alignment methods, and governance interventions, such as mandatory safety evaluations, licensing regimes, and international coordination agreements. The paper is notable for Geoffrey Hinton's involvement, as he left Google specifically to speak freely about existential risks from AI, lending significant credibility to the warning. It represents a rare instance of a consensus statement from leading researchers appearing in a top-tier scientific journal and calling for immediate action on AI risk rather than treating it as a speculative concern.
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Geoffrey Hinton estimated a 10-20% chance of AI-caused human extinction within 30 years
“Estimated a 10-20% chance that AI causes human extinction within the next three decades (paraphrase of BBC Radio 4 remarks as reported by The Guardian, Dec. 27, 2024).”
AI systems will generate persuasive disinformation at scale
“They want to use them for winning wars or manipulating electorates.”