The “Godfather of AI” warned that the technology’s rapid adoption will unleash massive unemployment — hurting the poorest people the most if safe scalability is not prioritized.
Geoffrey Hinton — a former Google whiz who last year won the Nobel Prize in physics for paving the way for the powerful AI systems we have today — said the CEOs pushing the technology as a possible solution to problems like hunger, poverty and disease are full of it.
“What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers,” Hinton told the Financial Times.
“It’s going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits. It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer. That’s not AI’s fault, that’s the capitalist system.”
Hinton, a self-avowed socialist, has been campaigning against the fervent AI race since leaving Google’s Brain team in 2023. He joined the company a decade earlier after it bought his company for $44 million.
Hinton, who spent two decades working at the University of Toronto, said many scientists agree that AI will become superintelligent, or able to outperform humans, in five to 20 years.
He has previously issued dire warnings about the technology’s powerful capabilities, and has advocated for a pause in AI development.
Engineering AI to act like mothers is “the only hope” for humanity, “because the mother is very concerned about the baby, preserving the life of the baby,” he said.
Nonetheless, the London-born academic admitted to using AI in his daily life – for everything from scientific research to fixing his dryer.
“I am 77 and the end is coming for me soon anyway,” he said.
Tech leaders like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, meanwhile, are full-steam ahead in the AI race.
When asked which of the two he trusts more, Hinton borrowed a 2016 quote from Lindsey Graham when asked to choose between Donald Trump or Ted Cruz to run for president: “It’s like being shot or poisoned.”
He added that he’s not optimistic about government intervention, as the US already has a relaxed regulatory stance on the industry.
When asked about a futuristic scenario in which humans live among AI robots, and slowly transform into cyborgs ourselves, with added artificial parts and chemicals, Hinton simply responded: “What’s wrong with that?”
Asked whether that’s a form of extinction, Hinton said: “Yep.”
“We are at a point in history where something amazing is happening, and it may be amazingly good, and it may be amazingly bad. We can make guesses, but things aren’t going to stay like they are.”
