Geoffrey Hinton, widely hailed as the “godfather of artificial intelligence,” has issued another stark warning about the future of work. He predicts that AI will drive unprecedented corporate profits—but at a potentially devastating cost: widespread unemployment.
“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. A few people will become much richer, while most people will become poorer. That’s not AI’s fault—it’s the capitalist system.”
Hinton, whose groundbreaking work in machine learning laid the foundation for today’s AI revolution, stressed that humanity is entering uncharted territory. “We don’t know what is going to happen. It may be amazingly good, or it may be amazingly bad. Things aren’t going to stay the same,” he cautioned.
The Nobel laureate has repeatedly raised concerns about AI’s potential to destabilize economies, especially if chatbots and other systems develop reasoning and language capabilities beyond human oversight. “AI has already shown it can think terrible thoughts,” Hinton noted, hinting that machines could eventually reason in ways humans cannot comprehend.
His warnings are echoed by Roman Yampolskiy, a computer science professor at the University of Louisville, who recently predicted that AI could eliminate up to 99% of jobs by 2030—or possibly as early as 2027. “We’re not talking about 10% unemployment, which is already alarming, but 99%,” Yampolskiy explained. “Employment provides people with income, structure, status, and community. If jobs disappear, societies will need to replicate all four on a massive scale—and currently, we have no plan B.”
With two of AI’s most influential voices sounding the alarm, the debate over how to balance technological innovation, corporate profit, and human livelihoods has never been more urgent.
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