At 77 years old, Geoffrey Hinton has a new calling in life. Like a modern-day prophet, the Nobel Prize winner is raising alarms about the dangers of uncontrolled and unregulated artificial intelligence.

Frequently dubbed the “Godfather of AI,” Hinton is known for his pioneering work on deep learning and neural networks which helped lay the foundation for the AI technology often used today. He began speaking publicly about his concerns in 2023 after he left his job at Google, where he worked for more than a decade.

As the technology — and investment dollars — powering AI have advanced in recent years, so too have the stakes behind it.

“It really is godlike,” Hinton told The Associated Press.

Hinton is among a growing number of prominent tech figures who speak of AI using language once reserved for the divine. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has referred to his company's technology as a “magic intelligence in the sky” while Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has even argued that AI could help bring about the Antichrist.

While researchers like Hinton are warning about the existential threat they believe AI poses to humanity, there are CEOs and theorists on the other side of the spectrum who argue we are approaching a kind of technological apocalypse that will usher in a new age of human evolution.

There are plenty of skeptics who doubt the technology merits this kind of veneration.

Computer scientist and author Ray Kurzweil has been predicting since the 1990s that humans will one day merge with technology, a concept often called transhumanism.

“We’re not going to actually tell what comes from our own brain versus what comes from AI. It’s all going to be embedded within ourselves. And it’s going to make ourselves more intelligent,” Kurzweil said.

In his latest book, “The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI,” Kurzweil doubles down on his earlier predictions. He believes that by 2045 we will have “multiplied our own intelligence a millionfold.”