Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI, has compared developing AI agents to owning a pet tiger.Speaking this week at the World AI Conference (WAIC 2025) in Shanghai, Yicai Global reported him saying:
Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI, has compared developing AI agents to owning a pet tiger.
Speaking this week at the World AI Conference (WAIC 2025) in Shanghai, Yicai Global reported him saying: "Our current situation is like someone keeping a tiger as a pet. A tiger cub can indeed be a cute pet, but if you continue to keep it, you must ensure that it does not kill you when it grows up.”
He says there are two choices: either train it so that it doesn't attack you or eliminate it.
“For AI, we have no way to eliminate it,” he warned. ““AI won’t give humans the chance to ‘pull the plug’ – when that day comes, the AI will persuade people not to do it, because our control over AI would be like a three-year-old trying to set rules for adults.”
As an example of this potential, the startup Anthropic revealed earlier this year that its Claude AI model has the capacity to blackmail engineers it believes are trying to shut it down.
Assigning human-like behavior to AI is not merely a metaphor. Some AI developers are actively seeking more human-like attributes.
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