India, April 24 -- If AI is "a very fast car with no steering wheel" then regulation must provide one, insists Nobel laureate and Artificial Intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, the visionary scientist widely known as the "godfather" of the self-learning tech.

Speaking at the Digital World Conference (DWC): AI for Social Development   - co-organized by the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) - Professor Hinton stressed that rapid advances in AI must be guided more carefully to serve societies - rather than undermine them.

"If you ever went out with a car that had no brake, boy, you are in trouble if you go down a hill," he told delegates. "But you're in even more trouble if there's no steering wheel."

His r...