Trump Doesn't Understand AI, Says Godfather Of AI

Professor Geoffrey Hinton who's known the 'Godfather of AI' says US President Donald Trump doesn't understand AI and is ill-advised on the tech.

05 Oct 2026, 07:16 · NDTV

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Donald Trump doubts AI risks, calling fears a hoax and renaming AI as super intelligence
AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton warns of existential AI threats and criticizes self-regulation claims
Trump appoints Jay Clayton as US AI czar to coordinate federal AI leadership efforts

What led David Robinson to quit OpenAI over safety concerns?

"I think Donald Trump doesn't really understand AI," Professor Geoffrey Hinton who's known the 'Godfather of AI' recently said in a television appearance.
"And I think he's ill-advised about AI," Hinton said. The Nobel Laureate is known as the "Godfather of AI" because he pioneered foundational deep learning and neural network technologies that power modern-day AI.

Hinton quit Google in May 2023 so he could freely speak out about the growing risks and dangers of artificial intelligence. And ever since he's time and again sounded the alarm on AI.

Hinton believes the existential threats are very real and is not ready to dismiss it as loose doomsday talk as some industry watchers and President Trump himself have suggested.

US President Donald Trump who has officially changed the name artificial intelligence to super intelligence or SI has called fears around the tech "a hoax".

Trump also recently held a luncheon with the who's who of the AI industry including OpenAI CEO Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk among others, and said the AI companies will self-regulate. This despite AI companies having called for government regulation.

"You can't rely on companies to regulate themselves when there are enormous financial incentives involved," according to Hinton.
Trump is of the opinion that the US cannot afford to slow down frontier AI development, else it may lose the race to China. "Whoever wins AI, wins (the world)," he says.

Hinton looks at the race quite differently and has a stark warning. "Winning a race to superintelligence is a lot like winning a global nuclear war. There is no winner."

Huang and Zuckerberg have both been vocal in their support of Trump against AI slowdown.

"People like Jensen Huang have a large financial interest in not slowing down the progress of AI because, obviously, he wants to sell more chips," Hinton had told NDTV's Shiv Aroor in a exclusive interview.

Nvidia chips are crucial to AI because their graphics processing units (GPUs) can perform thousands of calculations at the same time and are critical to building frontier AI.

Several AI bosses including Amodei and Altman have argued in favour of an orchestrated slow down of frontier AI development over safety concerns and its consequences on humanity.

Many in the industry including Hinton have warned of existential threat to humanity from AI with a 10-20% chance of humanity being wiped off within the next decade.

However, there are others including AI pioneer Yann LeCun who have dismissed these doomsday predictions. Famed American investor Michael Burry - on whom the Oscar-winning "The Big Short" film is based for predicting the 2008 housing crash in the US which led to the global finacial crisis - has also rubbished the doomsday theories and spoken of two scenarios.

One, that AI development has fundamentally slowed down and hence the leaders are trying to find an excuse to mask it and secondly before these companies go public they are trying to make the valuations soar with theories around how powerful their AI is.

However, the clamour to slow down AI is growing not just from the AI bosses but it's coming from safety researchers who are leaving the industry giving up millions in equity to speak freely on the perils of AI.

Also Read: OpenAI Vs Anthropic: Sam Altman Takes A Jab Over "Religious Force"

The Walk-Outs

There has been yet another very public exit at OpenAI over safety concerns which follows a slew of exits since 2004.
In an essay published in The Atlantic on Saturday, David Robinson said he's quitting the ChatGPT maker because he believed the company's "culture is broken."

According to Robisnon he led the writing of safety reports that accompanied OpenAI's major product launches. He also mentioned that with three-and-a-half years at OpenAI, he was "among the longest-tenured employees at the company."

Robinson stressed that the AI debate needs to go beyond "specific rules or new laws," addressing the overall culture at frontier AI labs.

He argued that AI companies need to start operating "like nuclear-power plants or busy airports, with layers of redundancy and careful, time-consuming planning, so that the occasional and inevitable human error does not open a door to disaster."

In 2024 there was a serious exodus at OpenAI.

Jan Leike, co-leader of OpenAI's Superalignment team resigned explicitly stating that safety culture and processes had "taken a backseat to shiny products."

Then there was Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist who co-led the Superalignment team alongside Leike. He left over fundamental disagreements regarding the trajectory of the company's safety research.

And there was Daniel Kokotajlo, a governance and alignment researcher who quit after losing confidence in the OpenAI leadership's capability to handle future advanced AGI systems responsibly and refusing restrictive non-disparagement exit terms. AGI or artificial general intelligence is loosely defined as a point where AI is able to match or surpass human intelligence.

Other AI safety researchers at OpenAI who were part of the 2024 exodus included William Saunders, Leopold Aschenbrenner and Pavel Izmailov.
Aschenbrenner was in fact let go over an alleged improper disclosure of internal company information. He disputed the reasoning, claiming he was targeted after writing an internal memo warning the board that security was insufficient. Aschenbrenner also turned down an equity payout worth nearly $1 million because he refused to sign a non-disparagement/nondisclosure agreement tied to his departure.

Google DeepMind's Josh Engels also quit recently and said "I now think that there's a terrifying chance that AI systems cause immense harm in the next five years." Engels was part of Google's AGI safety team. AGI or artificial general intelligence is loosely translated as AI matching or surpassing human intelligence.

Engels' announcement had come close on the heels of what is perhaps the most talked about AI executive exit in recent years - former OpenAI and Anthropic safety researcher Jacob Coxon, who left the Claude-maker before his equity vested. Which in a way points to the fact this perhaps can't just be rubbished as an employee trying to make noise after leaving.

"They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives," Coxon said.

This Thursday, OpenAI also let go three researchers for allegedly mishandling "sensitive information" and violating company policies, including work that involved an external organization that evaluates artificial intelligence models.

US Has a New AI Czar

In the meantime Trump on Sunday announced that he has appointed Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as the US' AI czar. Clayton has been tasked with coordinating the federal government's efforts to maintain US leadership in AI.

Clayton would head the newly created Super Intelligence Force (SIF), overseeing the US government's engagement with consumers, religious groups, AI companies and other stakeholders.

SIF would aim to "ensure that America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence" and to "protect the interests, and improve the lives, of all Americans," Trump said.

In addition to Clayton, the task force's leaders will include Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, Trump said.

The panel will report to the US President and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

This is the second time Trump has appointed an AI czar. Venture capitalist David Sacks held the post at the beginning of Trump's second term.

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