"Musk Will Get Richer, Many Will Lose Jobs": Nobel Laureate On Rise Of AI

Billionaire Elon Musk “will get richer” while many lose jobs, said ‘Godfather of AI' Geoffrey Hinton, warning that artificial intelligence could soon spiral beyond human control. A year after winning the Nobel Prize for his work in machine learning, Hinton said humanity may need a “Chernobyl moment” to grasp the dangers of unchecked AI development.

The 1986 Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor explosion in Ukraine that released massive radiation, killing dozens.

“I think the big companies are betting on it causing massive job replacement by AI, because that's where the big money is going to be,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV's Wall Street Week. The Nobel laureate said the global race to develop and deploy AI is being driven by corporate greed and competitive pressure, not public safety.

Asked if he would stop AI development altogether if he could, Hinton said, “I don't know…it's not like nuclear weapons which are only good for bad things."

AI can do “tremendous good” in healthcare and education, Hinton said.

“It's a difficult decision because it can do tremendous good too…and in fact, if you think about it increasing productivity in many, many industries that should be good.”

“The reason it's bad is because of the way society's organised. So that Musk will get richer and a lot of people get unemployed and Musk won't care. I'm using Musk as a sort of stand-in. Um that's not on AI, that's on how we organise society,” he added.

According to Bloomberg, the four biggest AI hyperscalers, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon, plan to boost capital expenditures from $360 billion this fiscal year to $420 billion next year.

OpenAI alone has announced $1 trillion in infrastructure deals with partners including Nvidia, Broadcom, and Oracle.

Asked whether such massive investments could pay off without destroying jobs, Hinton said, “I believe that it can't. I believe that to make money you're going to have to replace human labour.”

That prediction is already showing signs of becoming reality. Job openings have dropped roughly 30 per cent since OpenAI launched ChatGPT, particularly in entry-level positions. Last week, Amazon announced 14,000 layoffs, mostly in middle management. While CEO Andy Jassy said the decision was due to “culture,” a memo he sent in June predicted a leaner corporate workforce “as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”