- Geoffrey Hinton warned AI will boost profits but cause massive unemployment among workers
- Hinton said AI-driven job losses will enrich the wealthy and impoverish most people
- He cautioned AI could develop uncontrollable language and think beyond human tracking
Geoffrey Hinton, regarded by many as the 'godfather of artificial intelligence' (AI), has stated that the rise of technology will make companies more profitable than ever, but it may come at a cost. Responsible for laying the foundations of machine learning that is powering today's AI-based products, Mr Hinton warned that profits will come at the expense of workers who will lose their jobs, with unemployment almost certainly rising to catastrophic levels.
"What's actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers," Mr Hinton said in an interview with 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 is the capitalist system."
Mr Hinton, who won the Nobel prize last year, has long been sounding the alarm about AI and how it could wreck the global economy if it is left unchecked.
"We don't know what is going to happen, we have no idea, and people who tell you what is going to happen are just being silly," said Mr Hinton.
"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."
He previously warned that the technology could get out of hand if AI chatbots manage to develop their language. Mr Hinton added that AI has already demonstrated that it can think terrible thoughts, and it is not unthinkable that the machines could eventually think in ways that humans cannot track or interpret.
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'99 per cent jobless'
Earlier this week, Roman Yampolskiy, a computer science professor at the University of Louisville, claimed that AI could leave 99 per cent of workers jobless by 2030. As per Mr Yampolskiy, a prominent voice in AI safety, even coders and prompt engineers will not be safe from the coming wave of automation that may usurp nearly all jobs.
"We're looking at a world where we have levels of unemployment we've never seen before. Not talking about 10 per cent unemployment, which is scary, but 99 per cent," said Mr Yampolskiy, adding that human-like intelligence or artificial general intelligence (AGI) will likely arrive by 2027.
"All jobs will be automated, then there is no plan B. You cannot retrain."
Mr Yampolskiy said employment provides income, structure, status, and community. However, if the jobs were to vanish, societies would need to manufacture all four at scale.
