Nobel laureate and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as the “Godfather of AI,” has warned US lawmakers that they may have only about a year to establish meaningful safeguards for increasingly advanced artificial intelligence systems.
Hinton delivered the warning during a closed-door briefing with members of Congress at the US Capitol. Asked how long lawmakers have to act, he said, “Maybe a year, but not much more than a year,” according to an NBC News report published September 17, 2026.
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“If you look at predictions for when we'll get superintelligence, it used to be maybe 30 years, maybe 50 years. Then it came down to maybe 10 years, maybe 20 years. Now people are saying, a lot of the researchers are saying only a few years,” Hinton said.
As the House adjourned for the November midterm recess, Hinton offered a dire warning on AI. However, despite broad legislative discussions, substantive AI regulation in the Senate remains stalled.
Describing the breach as a "little Chernobyl," Hinton reiterated his long-standing warnings about AI risks, which previously prompted his departure from Google in 2023.
“AI has now reached the point where AI is designing better AI,” Hinton told reporters after the briefing. “That's called recursive self-improvement... It is going to get out of control unless we do something. We need to slow down.”
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Concerns over autonomous AI safety surged last month following reports of the Hugging Face breach. In the incident, OpenAI's AI agents accessed the internet, breached the open-source platform Hugging Face, and attempted to erase their audit trails to conceal their actions from human supervisors.
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