---
id: "2023-05-01-hinton-leaves-google"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2023-05-01-hinton-leaves-google/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2023-05-01"
date_precision: day
category: policy-safety
importance: 4
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 5
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2023-05-01-hinton-leaves-google/

# Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google so he can speak freely about AI risks

On May 1, 2023 The New York Times reported that Geoffrey Hinton, the deep-learning pioneer and Turing Award winner, had quit Google after more than a decade so he could warn about AI's dangers. He said digital intelligence might overtake humans far sooner than he had thought, and he later won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.

## Key facts
- Announced May 1, 2023 via a New York Times interview (Cade Metz)
- Hinton on X: he left 'so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google', adding that Google had acted very responsibly
- Concerns: misinformation (people 'not be able to know what is true anymore'), job losses, and AI becoming smarter than people much sooner than he expected
- On May 3, 2023 he wrote on X that he now predicts 5 to 20 years (for digital intelligence overtaking us), 'but without much confidence'

## What happened

Hinton, whose work on backpropagation and deep belief nets underpins modern AI, left his Google role and began speaking publicly about existential and societal risks. A few weeks later he signed the CAIS statement on AI extinction risk.

## Why it matters

When one of the field's founders publicly switched to warning about it, AI x-risk moved into the mainstream. It paved the way for the 2023 policy wave (CAIS statement, Bletchley) and for Hinton later endorsing whistleblower and safety efforts.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): in its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): in its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): in its training data
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): in its training data

## Sources

1. [Geoffrey Hinton on X: 'I now predict 5 to 20 years'](https://x.com/geoffreyhinton/status/1653687894534504451) (x.com, official)
2. [MIT Technology Review: Deep learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton quits Google](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/01/1072478/deep-learning-pioneer-geoffrey-hinton-quits-google/) (technologyreview.com, press)
3. [CNN: AI pioneer quits Google to warn about the technology's dangers](https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/01/tech/geoffrey-hinton-leaves-google-ai-fears/index.html) (cnn.com, press)
4. [New York Times: 'The Godfather of A.I.' leaves Google and warns of danger ahead](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/technology/ai-google-chatbot-engineer-quits-hinton.html) (nytimes.com, press)
5. [MIT Technology Review interview: why Hinton is scared of AI](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/02/1072528/geoffrey-hinton-google-why-scared-ai/) (technologyreview.com, press)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created (primary source checked)

## Related

- 2024-10-08: [Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton](https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-10-08-nobel-physics-hopfield-hinton/index.md)
- 2023-05-30: [Leading AI scientists sign the one-sentence statement on AI extinction risk](https://postcutoff.com/e/2023-05-30-cais-statement-ai-risk/index.md)
- 2023-03-22: [Future of Life Institute open letter calls for a 6-month pause on training AI more powerful than GPT-4](https://postcutoff.com/e/2023-03-22-fli-pause-giant-ai-experiments/index.md)
- 2019-03-27: [Hinton, LeCun and Bengio receive the Turing Award for deep learning](https://postcutoff.com/e/2019-03-27-turing-award-deep-learning/index.md)
- People: [Geoffrey Hinton](https://postcutoff.com/person/geoffrey-hinton/)
- Archived: 1 post, listed in https://postcutoff.com/e/2023-05-01-hinton-leaves-google/index.json