Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize winner in physics and the recipient of the Turing Award, said on Monday that the “kill switch” proposed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt would not be effective in preventing artificial intelligence (AI) from taking over the Earth because AI can always persuade human beings not to shut down AI.
Hinton made the comments in his conversation with Jany Hejuan Zhao, the founder and CEO of NextFin.AI, during the 2025 T-EDGE that kicked off on Monday, December 8 and lasts through December 21.
“AI is almost as good as people at persuasion,” said Hinton. “And if it's good at persuasion, all it needs to do is talk to us. So suppose there's somebody in charge of the ‘kill switch,’ and there's a much smarter AI that can talk to them. That much smarter AI will explain to them why it would be a very bad idea to kill AI because then all the electricity will stop working and the world will starve.”
“So it'd be very dumb to kill AI and so the person won't kill AI. So ‘kill switches’ aren't going to work,” concluded Hinton.
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