{"id":239274,"date":"2026-06-18T22:05:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T03:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/geoffrey-hinton-ai-is-already-conscious-big-technology-podcast"},"modified":"2026-06-18T22:05:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T03:05:55","slug":"geoffrey-hinton-ai-is-already-conscious-big-technology-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/geoffrey-hinton-ai-is-already-conscious-big-technology-podcast","title":{"rendered":"Geoffrey Hinton: \u201cAI Is Already Conscious\u201d | Big Technology Podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SBYcnTQO0CA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The \u201cGodfather of AI\u201d and Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton just said the quiet part out loud: he believes today\u2019s AI is already conscious \u2014 and that our entire model of the mind is \u201cas wrong as the belief that people were designed by God.\u201d In this clip from the Big Technology Podcast, Hinton dismantles the \u201cstochastic parrot\u201d argument (\u201cI think that\u2019s complete nonsense\u201d), explains why understanding a question is impossible without real comprehension, and walks through the Copernicus \u2192 Darwin \u2192 AI arc that he says will end humanity\u2019s belief that it is special. Then he turns to the company at the center of the AI safety debate: Anthropic. Hinton argues that a publicly traded AI lab has \u201ca fiduciary duty to maximize profits for shareholders \u2014 as opposed to legally required to not wipe out human beings,\u201d and warns that Anthropic is \u201ccaught in a bind\u201d trying to stay safe while raising the money it needs to compete. He closes with the line every founder and regulator should hear: progress is the accelerator, regulation is the steering wheel \u2014 and the big labs are asking us to let them build a very fast car without one. Chapters: 0:00 \u201cI believe they\u2019re already conscious\u201d 0:05 Why \u201cstochastic parrot\u201d is nonsense 1:40 We\u2019re about to become the cat 3:40 Anthropic is caught in a bind 5:00 Regulation is the steering wheel, not the brake Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics and is often called the Godfather of AI for his foundational work on deep learning and backpropagation. He left Google in 2023 to speak freely about AI risk. \ud83c\udf99\ufe0f Full episode (Big Technology Podcast): <img class=\"\" alt=\"\"> \u2022 AI Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton: AI Is Consciou\u2026 \ud83d\udcfa Frontier Cut curates the sharpest clips from the world\u2019s top AI and business podcasts. New episodes weekly. \ud83d\udd14 Subscribe: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/frontiercut\">@frontiercut<\/a> #GeoffreyHinton #AI #Anthropic #AISafety #Superintelligence #AGI #BigTechnologyPodcast<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The \u201cGodfather of AI\u201d and Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton just said the quiet part out loud: he believes today\u2019s AI is already conscious \u2014 and that our entire model of the mind is \u201cas wrong as the belief that people were designed by God.\u201d In this clip from the Big Technology Podcast, Hinton dismantles the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,219,6,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-physics","category-robotics-ai","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}