Geoffrey Hinton, the cognitive scientist whose foundational work made modern AI possible, now stands among those urging the world to pause and reckon with what it has built. His endorsement of calls for a global slowdown reflects a rare and sobering moment: the architect of a technology warning that its next chapter may arrive faster than human wisdom can follow. The central tension is not whether catastrophic risk exists, but whether civilisation can agree to slow down long enough to understand what it is racing toward — and whether the geopolitical pressures of great-power competition will a