Geoffrey Hinton: it might turn out we were better off without AI

Re:Geoffrey Hinton: it might turn out we were better off wit... by josephg on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @11:06AM (#50367577)

> There is no general counsel where humanity gets together and decides what humanity works on.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968)

Biological Weapons Convention (1972)

Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA (1975)

We've done this sort of thing plenty of times around specific, dangerous technologies.

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Re:Geoffrey Hinton: it might turn out we were better off wit... by pixl97 on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @12:17PM (#50368627)

And countries still violate these treaties. See Iran and NK.

Also the bio/DNA ones are quickly falling apart as the technology to do these kinds of things on a small scale are readily available. To the point where we're finding illegal wet labs in the US.

Nuclear was more of an exception because of many of difficulties in purifying stuff for weapons and its detectability.

AI is a much, much, much harder problem is it uses the already existing infrastructure as a base. Unless we regulate, monitor, and ban all private usage of technology AI can be developed at a small scale.

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Re:Geoffrey Hinton: it might turn out we were better off wit... by josephg on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @12:53PM (#50369131)

Is your argument essentially that because global treaties haven't been universally effective in all cases, we should just YOLO AI even if it has the potential to cause great harm?

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Re:Geoffrey Hinton: it might turn out we were better off wit... by pixl97 on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @09:45PM (#50374474)

No, we shouldn't yolo AI, but because we started the ball rolling and it may be impossible to stop.

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