New Delhi, Sept. 28 -- The "Godfather of AI", Geoffrey Hinton, has warned that increasingly advanced artificial intelligence could pose a threat to humanity even when it is not explicitly instructed to cause harm. The Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist said an AI system could potentially regard humans as an obstacle if removing them appeared to be the most effective way to achieve a goal.

Hinton, who recently participated in a closed-door briefing on AI risks for US lawmakers, said there could be only around a year for Congress to put appropriate safety measures in place.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Hinton described how an apparently beneficial objective could produce unintended and dangerous outcomes if an AI system becomes ...