Godfather Of AI Warns Technology Could Invent Its Own Language: 'It Gets Scary...'

Geoffrey Hinton, regarded by many as the 'godfather of artificial intelligence' (AI), has warned that the technology could get out of hand if chatbots manage to develop their language. Currently, AI does its thinking in English, allowing developers to track what the technology is thinking, but there could come a point where humans might not understand what AI is planning to do, as per Mr Hinton.

"Now it gets more scary if they develop their own internal languages for talking to each other," he said on an episode of the "One Decision" podcast that aired last month.

"I wouldn't be surprised if they developed their own language for thinking, and we have no idea what they're thinking."

Mr Hinton added that AI has already demonstrated that it can think terrible thoughts, and it is not unthinkable that the machines could eventually think in ways that humans cannot track or interpret.

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Warning about AI

Mr Hinton laid the foundations for machine learning that is powering today's AI-based products and applications. However, the Nobel laureate grew wary of AI's future development and cut ties with his employer, Google, in order to speak more freely on the issue.

"It will be comparable with the industrial revolution. But instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it's going to exceed people in intellectual ability. We have no experience of what it's like to have things smarter than us," said Mr Hinton at the time.

"I am worried that the overall consequence of this might be systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control."

Mr Hinton has been a big advocate of government regulation for the technology, especially given the unprecedented pace of development. His warning also comes in the backdrop of repeated instances of AI chatbots hallucinating thoughts.

In April, OpenAI's internal tests revealed that its o3 and o4-mini AI models were hallucinating or making things up much more frequently than even the non-reasoning models, such as GPT-4o. The company said it did not have any idea why this was happening.

In a technical report, OpenAI said, "more research is needed" to understand why hallucinations are getting worse as it scales up its reasoning models.