His idea is an approval system for AI — but what would it take to get a green light?
Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI” due to his pioneering work in the field, has a new, bold idea: an FDA-style approval system for AI. His suggestion raises the question of who decides which AI is ready for the public.
On an episode of the Smart Girl Dumb Questions podcast released earlier this week, Hinton said AI companies should have to prove that their products are safe to a federal regulator before releasing them to the public. The Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist wants AI to follow a similar approval process to drugs.
“You’re not allowed to just make a new drug and release it on the market,” Hinton said on the podcast. “You have to convince the FDA. And to do that, you have to do a lot of work, about $1 billion worth of work.”
That process “seems like the very least we should have for AI,” Hinton said.
Right now, companies independently decide if a product is ready and passes internal safety benchmarks. Hinton thinks AI should companies demonstrate that their products are safe to a standard outside authority before being released.
Hinton’s call for greater oversight arrives as AI industry insiders raise alarms about the technology they are helping construct. Researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic have recently warned that companies are moving too quickly toward more powerful systems without knowing how to keep them under human control.
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