Hinton says AI could trigger a blackout this year or next

single source· 1 articles · confidence: medium · first seen 2026-11-03 21:35 UTC

What this means for you

Nothing to act on. This is one researcher's view of risk, given in an interview, with no failure mode described, no system identified and no date beyond "this year or next". There is nothing here to change a deployment, a purchase or a migration.

Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel prize-winning computer scientist whose work on artificial neural networks underpins modern AI, told the Guardian it might turn out we would have been better off never developing the technology, and warned it could trigger a large-scale incident this year or next — a temporary shutdown of financial or power systems, for example. He said he is not a "doomer" and that AI could still lead to a "wonderful future". The interview gives no mechanism, evidence or specific date for the incident he describes.

Key facts

  • ·Hinton told the Guardian "it might be that we would have been better off never developing it". source
  • ·He warned AI could trigger a large-scale incident this year or next, such as a temporary blackout of financial or power systems. source
  • ·He said he is not a "doomer" and believes AI has the potential to lead to a "wonderful future". source
  • ·Hinton is a Nobel prize-winning computer scientist whose research into artificial neural networks underpins the technology. source
  • ·The interview was published on 3 November 2026. source

What the sources say

  • The Guardian AI — Interview in which the Nobel laureate sets out a near-term risk of infrastructure failure, without naming a mechanism.

Sources

The original reporting. Follow these — they did the work.

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