Responding to Hinton: Artificial Wisdom, Bayesian Cognitive Constitution, and Civilization-Level AI Governance

As a founding figure of deep learning, Geoffrey Hinton’s recent warnings about the potential risks of AI carry “civilizational authority,” sparking deep attention across academia, industry, and policy circles regarding superintelligence, alignment problems, and accelerating competitive dynamics. From a scientific and philosophical perspective, this paper analyzes the core logic behind Hinton’s warnings, highlighting that his primary concern lies in system-level loss of control driven by rationality, rather than accidental errors or malicious AI. To address these risks, this paper proposes three response paths: first, the transition from Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Artificial Wisdom (AW), emphasizing uncertainty awareness, long-term consequence evaluation, and self-restraint; second, the adoption of Bayesian truth-seeking principles as a cognitive constitution to ensure decision transparency, revisability, auditability, and limit false certainty; third, the establishment of civilization-level AI constitutional governance, focusing on management of goal functions, acceleration speed, and decision responsibility chains, including irreversible risk limits, mandatory deceleration mechanisms, and human veto powers. Furthermore, this paper discusses the practical implementation of AW plus Bayesian constitutional principles in governance, covering technical frameworks, legal systems, and societal mechanisms, ultimately proposing a “wu wei” natural control system that balances efficiency and safety while enabling self-regulation of civilization. The goal is to provide a comprehensive integration of science, philosophy, and institutional design to systematically address the AI risks highlighted by Hinton.