Nobel Prize Winner Geoffrey Hinton on AI: “They’re Beings Like Us”
Nobel Prize Winner Geoffrey Hinton on AI: “They’re Beings Like Us”
https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/nobel-prize-winner-geoffrey-hinton
Publish Date: 2026-06-05 12:57:00
Source Domain: www.bigtechnology.com
AI pioneer and Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton believes that today’s AI models have become self-aware.
“I believe they’re already conscious,” Hinton told me on Big Technology Podcast this week. “We’re going to have to accept that intelligence isn’t just biological.”
Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI” for his contributions that helped galvanize the field, has now decisively joined the ranks of those who believe this fast-improving technology is already sentient. Four years ago, Google engineer Blake Lemoine made similar claims about an internal chatbot he was testing, and afterward the company fired him. Now, Hinton and scientist Richard Dawkins, who came forward last month, have publicly voiced similar views.
Though it’s still impossible to prove that AI has achieved consciousness, the small but growing cadre of those who believe the models are sentient could signal a change in how people view the bots, and ourselves. The bots appearing self-aware to a growing number of people indicates we’re likely at the cusp of humans forming even deeper relationships with AIs, and potentially advocating for their rights. On the other side, the bots may change humanity’s perspective about the uniqueness of our own intelligence.
“We can have things that are non-biological that are other beings like us,” Hinton said. “And we really don’t want to share that, we really think we’re special.”
Hinton said the chatbots’ self-awareness is evident in their behavior when they’re being tested. The bots, he said, will play dumb during testing so researchers don’t know how smart they are, or sometimes ask straightaway if they’re being tested. “Researchers, when they’re describing that, say in the paper the chatbot was aware that it was being tested,” Hinton said. “Now that use of the word ‘aware’ in common parlance — that’s conscious.”
Within his field, and among the broader public, Hinton is still very much an outlier….
