The father of artificial intelligence (AI), Professor Geoffrey Hinton, created shockwaves last week when he announced he was quitting his job at Google so he can speak out freely against the technology.

“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” said Prof Hinton, who joined the chorus of scientists, researchers and others sharing the same fear that generative AI poses a real threat to societies, with a desire to slow this frantic race and push firms to proceed in a measured fashion.