Pioneering computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, whose work has won him a Nobel Prize and is known as the “Godfather of AI,” said artificial intelligence would lead to unemployment and increased profits.
In a detailed interview with Financial Times Last year, the former Google scientist cleared the air about why he left the tech giant, raised the alarm over potential threats from AI, and revealed how he uses the technology. But he has also predicted who will win and who will lose.
“What’s really going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers,” Hinton said in September. “It’s going to create massive unemployment and massive increases in profits. It’s going to make some people very rich and most people poor. It’s not AI’s fault, it’s the capitalist system.”
This is the echo of his comments fate In August 2025, when he said AI companies are more concerned with short-term profits than the long-term consequences of the technology.
Layoffs haven’t increased, but evidence is mounting that AI is reducing opportunities, especially at the entry level for recent college graduates starting their careers.
A New York Fed survey at the time found that companies using AI were more likely to retrain their workers than fire them, although layoffs are expected to increase in the coming months.
Hinton said the former health care is one industry that will likely be protected from a job armageddon.
“If you can make doctors five times more efficient, we can all get five times more health care for the same price,” he said. Diary of a CEO YouTube series in June 2025. “There’s almost no limit to how much health care people can get—[patients] Always want more health care if there is no cost.
Still, Hinton believes that jobs that perform mundane tasks will be taken over by AI, while leaving some jobs that require a higher level of skill.
In his interview with FTHe also dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s idea of paying a universal basic income because AI would disrupt the economy and reduce demand for workers, saying it “doesn’t compromise human dignity” and the value people get from employment.
Hinton has long warned about the dangers of AI without railings, estimating a 10% to 20% chance that the technology will wipe out humans after the development of superintelligence.
In his view, the dangers of AI fall into two categories: the risk that the technology itself poses to the future of humanity, and the consequences of AI being manipulated by people with bad intentions.
