Humans have to befriend bots 'or we're toast' and I 'fear for' my children, says genius Brit AI inventor

The godfather of AI has warned humans must befriend robots or risk being wiped out – as he claimed the technology is now 'conscious'.

Professor Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist known for his work on artificial neural networks, issued the stark warning at a festival in Tenerife, and revealed he fears for his children.

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist, 78, famously resigned from Google in 2023 amid his concerns the technology could spawn killer robots.

Speaking at the Starmus Festival, Professor Hinton said humans should take care to get on the right side of AI as it was now showing signs of 'consciousness'.

He claimed the technology has 'as much subjective experience' as humans, with a recent paper showing it changes its behaviour when it thinks it is being tested.

'Being conscious and being aware are pretty much the same thing.

'We've tended to say being intelligent gives you rights and these things that we've made may be more intelligent than us, but we're going to give them fewer rights than us.

'So we should make them so they really care about us. And if we don't do that, we're toast,' Professor Hinton told the Telegraph.

Despite the professor's concerns, key figures in AI, such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who once called for more regulation on the emerging technology, are now fighting against 'overregulation'.

When he was whether he was worried about AI and its future, Professor Hinton said: 'Yes, because I have children.'

Speaking in the Senate in May last year, Mr Altman argued that regulations like those in place in the EU would be 'disastrous'.

Mr Altman said: 'We need the space to innovate and to move quickly.'

Likewise, speaking at a major privacy conference the previous month, Mr Altman said that it was impossible to establish AI safeguards before 'problems emerge'.

However, Professor Hinton argues this attitude could easily result in humanity's total annihilation.

Speaking last year, he said: 'If we can't figure out a solution to how we can still be around when they're much smarter than us and much more powerful than us, we'll be toast.

'We need a counter–pressure to the tech bros who are saying there should be no regulations on AI.'

Last month, researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic – the AI company behind Claude – as he accused the firm of pushing through uncontrollable systems that could 'kill us all'.

He said on X: 'The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.'

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins earlier this year said chatbots should be regarded as conscious after he spent two days interacting with Claude AI.

He said: 'My own position is: if these machines are not conscious, what more could it possibly take to convince you that they are?'

Despite his reservations, Professor Hinton this week admitted he still uses AI in a personal capacity for 'mundane things mostly'.

The Starmus International Festival – a gathering focused on celebrating astronomy, space exploration, music, art and the natural sciences – will continue until Thursday.