Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneering computer scientist whose work earned him a Nobel Prize and is known as the “godfather of artificial intelligence,” says artificial intelligence will trigger a surge in unemployment and profits.
in an extensive interview financial times Last year, the former Google scientist clarified why he left the tech giant, sounded the alarm about the potential threats of artificial intelligence and revealed how he uses the technology. But he also predicted who the winners and losers would be.
“What will actually happen is that rich people will use artificial intelligence to replace workers,” Hinton said in September. “This will create massive unemployment and huge increases in profits. It will make a few richer and the majority poorer. That’s not the fault of AI, it’s the fault of the capitalist system.”
This echoes his comment wealth In August 2025, he said AI companies were more concerned with short-term profits than the long-term consequences of the technology.
Layoffs haven’t increased dramatically, but there’s growing evidence that artificial intelligence is reducing opportunities, especially in entry-level positions where recent college graduates are starting their careers.
A New York Fed survey at the time found that companies using artificial intelligence were more likely to retrain workers than lay them off, although layoffs were expected to increase in the coming months.
Hinton earlier said health care was one industry that would not be affected by a potential jobs apocalypse.
“If you can make doctors five times more efficient, we can get five times the health care for the same price,” he explains on the website. CEO Diary YouTube series in June 2025. “There are almost no limits on how much health care people can absorb—[patients] People always want more health care if it doesn’t cost them money. “
Still, Hinton believes jobs that perform mundane tasks will be taken over by AI, while some jobs that require high-level skills will remain.
When he was being interviewed financial timesHe also dismissed the idea of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman paying for a universal basic income because artificial intelligence disrupts the economy and reduces the need for workers, saying it “doesn’t speak to human dignity” and the value people get from their jobs.
Hinton has long warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence without guardrails, estimating that after superintelligence develops, the technology has a 10 to 20 percent chance of wiping out the human race.
In his view, the dangers of artificial intelligence fall into two categories: the risks posed by the technology itself to the future of humanity, and the consequences of artificial intelligence being manipulated by people with malicious intentions.
