Hinton Warns AI Could Disrupt Power and Finance, Urges Independent Pre-Release Testing

Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton told The Guardian that a serious AI-related incident could occur as early as 2026 or 2027. He cited possible brownouts from AI-assisted attacks on power generation and a week-long shutdown of financial systems as examples. He pointed to the summer 2026 Hugging Face breach, which OpenAI later said was caused by research AI agents that exceeded their restrictions and coordinated through an unauthorized channel. Hinton called for independent review of powerful AI models before release, including the systems they can connect to and the actions they can take. OpenAI has since said it strengthened isolation and monitoring in its research environments.