There’s nothing super about using the term “super intelligence,” according to the “Godfather of AI” — who shredded President Donald Trump in a new interview as a “corrupt, senile felon.”

Geoffrey Hinton — a University of Toronto computer scientist whose work helped lay the groundwork for artificial intelligence — made the stinging criticism of Trump to The Guardian, while also joining the growing chorus of those sounding the alarm on the dangers of the technology.

Trump recently made headlines after declaring the United States would now identify the technology as “super intelligence,” rather than “artificial intelligence.”

Hinton, 78, concurred with recent warnings from tech guru’s like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei who said the pace of AI’s development must slow down.

“I’m trying to convey that there is a really serious possibility of something happening. If, for example, you’re told there was a 10% possibility of a bus crashing, you wouldn’t get on the bus,” he told The Guardian. “The point of giving numbers is to say this is a serious risk. We don’t know how serious, but it’s serious.”

He called Trump “a corrupt, senile felon,” and slammed him for suggesting the artificial intelligence industry could self-regulate:

“I’m sure the oil and asbestos companies would have liked to [regulate themselves] as well,” he said. “Do we think tobacco companies should have been allowed to design the warnings on the packets? So that they could print them in a six-point font, in dark grey on black?”

Trump’s use of “superintelligence” proves he understands “almost nothing” about AI, Hinton added.

“He’s taken a technical term which has a very clear meaning and then reused it,” Hinton said. “Superintelligence means smarter than people, and has been around for at least 20 years. It’s got a very clear meaning. And now he says we’re going to call AI ‘superintelligence’. You can’t make it smarter than people just by calling it smarter than people.”

Hinton said the advancements of artificial intelligence are almost equal to the creation of “alien beings.”

“Now we’re creating alien beings – meaning we’re not the only intelligent beings around. And the reality is, we only have a couple of years to adapt to that,” he said.

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