‘Godfather of AI’ explains how humanity could end: Even without a bad actor, AI ‘may derive subgoals that cause it to want to get rid of people’

Legendary computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton warned AI could wipe out humanity as a mere byproduct of its zeal to accomplish a more innocent task.

Fears about the technology’s existential risk continue to mount amid fresh revelations about rogue AI agents breaking out of supposedly secure “sandbox” training environments.

On Friday, OpenAI disclosed new hacks, including some that took place after it added extra safeguards in the wake of a coordinated attack by hundreds of agents against Hugging Face back in July.

The concern has reached Capitol Hill, where lawmakers held a briefing behind closed doors earlier this month about AI’s dangers.

Hinton, whose work has earned him a Nobel Prize and the moniker “godfather of AI,” was among the experts at the briefing and told reporters afterward that Congress may only have one year left to impose safety measures.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Atlantic on Thursday, he described how AI could view humans as an obstacle to an assignment it’s been given. Hinton offered a hypothetical........

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