Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist whose research helped lay the foundations for modern artificial intelligence, told City AM that the UK’s growing dependence on a handful of American tech giants is “very dangerous,” warning that concentration of AI development in the hands of a few American firms was particularly concerning given the people running them. He said “I think it’s particularly dangerous because of the character of some of the people involved, like Altman, Musk and Zuckerberg. I wouldn’t buy a used car from any of them,” taking aim at OpenAI boss Sam Altman, Tesla, SpaceX and xAi chief Elon Musk and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg as their companies pour billions into increasingly powerful systems while governments struggle to establish how they should be regulated. Hinton also criticised Altman over OpenAI’s failed boardroom coup in 2023, saying “Ilya has a strong moral compass. He’s a brilliant scientist. He’s not so strong on political manipulation. Sam is the exact opposite,” and said he too would have fired Altman, though joked he would have waited until after a funding round. Hinton, who left Google in 2023 to speak more openly about AI safety, dismissed the idea of a “kill switch” that could cut countries off from AI systems they rely on, saying “When AI is that smart, it’ll be very good at persuasion. So even if you have someone who’s meant to turn it off if it