‘Godfather of A.I.’ leaves Google after a decade to warn society of technology he’s touted
Artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton speaks at the Thomson Reuters Financial and Risk Summit in Toronto, December 4, 2017.
Mark Blinch | Reuters
Geoffrey Hinton, known as “The Godfather of AI,” received his Ph.D. in artificial intelligence 45 years ago and has remained one of the most respected voices in the field.
For the past decade Hinton worked part-time at Google, between the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters and Toronto. But he has quit the internet giant, and he told the New York Times that he’ll be warning the world about the potential threat of AI, which he said is coming sooner than he previously thought.
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“I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away,” Hinton told the Times, in a story published Monday. “Obviously, I no longer think that.”
Hinton, who was named a 2018 Turing Award winner for conceptual and engineering breakthroughs, said he now has some regrets over his life’s work, the Times reported, citing near-term risks of AI taking jobs, and the proliferation of fake photos, videos and text that appear real to the average person.
In a statement to CNBC, Hinton said, “I now think the digital intelligences we are creating are very different from biological intelligences.”
Hinton referenced the power of GPT-4, the most-advanced large language model (LLM) from startup OpenAI, whose technology has gone viral since the chatbot ChatGPT was launched late last year. Here’s how he described what’s happening now:
“If I have 1000 digital agents who are all exact clones with identical weights, whenever one agent learns how to do something, all of them immediately know it because they share weights,” Hinton told CNBC. “Biological agents cannot do this. So collections of identical digital agents can acquire hugely more knowledge than any individual biological agent. That is why GPT-4 knows hugely more than any one person.”
Hinton was sounding the alarm even before leaving Google. In an interview with CBS News that aired in March, Hinton was asked what he thinks the “chances are of AI just wiping out humanity.” He responded, “It’s not inconceivable. That’s all I’ll say.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has also publicly warned of the risks of AI. He told “60 Minutes” last month that society isn’t prepared for what’s coming. At the same time, Google is showing off its own products, like self-learning robots and Bard, its ChatGPT competitor.
But when asked if “the pace of change can outstrip our ability to adapt,” Pichai downplayed the risk. “I don’t think so. We’re sort of an infinitely adaptable species,” he said.
Over the past year, Hinton has reduced his time at Google, according to an internal document viewed by CNBC. In March of 2022, he moved to 20% of full-time. Later in the year he was assigned to a new team within Brain Research. His most recent role was vice president and engineering fellow, reporting to Jeff Dean within Google Brain.
In an emailed statement to CNBC, Dean said he appreciated Hinton for “his decade of contributions at Google.”
“I’ll miss him, and I wish him well!” Dean wrote. “As one of the first companies to publish AI Principles, we remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. We’re continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly.”
Hinton’s departure is a high-profile loss for Google Brain, the team behind much of the company’s work in AI. Several years ago, Google reportedly spent $44 million to acquire a company started by Hinton and two of his students in 2012.
His research group made major breakthroughs in deep learning that accelerated speech recognition and object classification. Their technology would help form new ways of using AI, including ChatGPT and Bard.
Google has rallied teams across the company to integrate Bard’s technology and LLMs into more products and services. Last month, the company said it would be merging Brain with DeepMind to “significantly accelerate our progress in AI.”
According to the Times, Hinton said he quit his job at Google so he could freely speak out about the risks of AI. He told the paper, “I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have.”
Hinton tweeted on Monday, “I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google. Google has acted very responsibly.”
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the Snowflake Summit in San Francisco on June 2, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty Images
OpenAI has been awarded a $200 million contract to provide the U.S. Defense Department with artificial intelligence tools.
The department announced the one-year contract on Monday, months after OpenAI said it would collaborate with defense technology startup Anduril to deploy advanced AI systems for “national security missions.”
“Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains,” the Defense Department said. It’s the first contract with OpenAI listed on the Department of Defense’s website.
Anduril received a $100 million defense contract in December. Weeks earlier, OpenAI rival Anthropic said it would work with Palantir and Amazon to supply its AI models to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s co-founder and CEO, said in a discussion with OpenAI board member and former National Security Agency leader Paul Nakasone at a Vanderbilt University event in April that “we have to and are proud to and really want to engage in national security areas.”
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Defense Department specified that the contract is with OpenAI Public Sector LLC, and that the work will mostly occur in the National Capital Region, which encompasses Washington, D.C., and several nearby counties in Maryland and Virginia.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is working to build additional computing power in the U.S. In January, Altman appeared alongside President Donald Trump at the White House to announce the $500 billion Stargate project to build AI infrastructure in the U.S.
The new contract will represent a small portion of revenue at OpenAI, which is generating over $10 billion in annualized sales. In March, the company announced a $40 billion financing round at a $300 billion valuation.
In April, Microsoft, which supplies cloud infrastructure to OpenAI, said the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency has authorized the use of the Azure OpenAI service with secret classified information.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is shown on its launch pad carrying Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet network satellites as the vehicle is prepared for launch at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 28, 2025.
Steve Nesius | Reuters
United Launch Alliance on Monday was forced to delay the second flight carrying a batch of Amazon‘s Project Kuiper internet satellites because of a problem with the rocket booster.
With roughly 30 minutes left in the countdown, ULA announced it was scrubbing the launch due to an issue with “an elevated purge temperature” within its Atlas V rocket’s booster engine. The company said it will provide a new launch date at a later point.
“Possible issue with a GN2 purge line that cannot be resolved inside the count,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno said in a post on Bluesky. “We will need to stand down for today. We’ll sort it and be back.”
The launch from Florida’s Space Coast had been set for last Friday, but was rescheduled to Monday at 1:25 p.m. ET due to inclement weather.
Amazon in April successfully sent up 27 Kuiper internet satellites into low Earth orbit, a region of space that’s within 1,200 miles of the Earth’s surface. The second voyage will send “another 27 satellites into orbit, bringing our total constellation size to 54 satellites,” Amazon said in a blog post.
Kuiper is the latest entrant in the burgeoning satellite internet industry, which aims to beam high-speed internet to the ground from orbit. The industry is currently dominated by Elon Musk’s Space X, which operates Starlink. Other competitors include SoftBank-backed OneWeb and Viasat.
Amazon is targeting a constellation of more than 3,000 satellites. The company has to meet a Federal Communications Commission deadline to launch half of its total constellation, or 1,618 satellites, by July 2026.
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