‘Musk Will Get Richer, Millions To Lose Jobs’: Nobel Laureate Warns Against AI Risks
While raising concerns over massive job loss due to rising adoption of AI, Hinton also acknowledged that the emerging technology can do “tremendous good” in education and healthcare.
Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist, has reiterated his concerns about the risks of massive job loss amid the rising adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). He also cautioned against the growth of AI companies and tech billionaires at the cost of millions of workers.
Hinton, known as the “godfather of AI”, remarked that although some economists argue past technological shifts both eliminated and created employment, AI-driven technology may not follow the same path. He expressed his doubts over job creation while highlighting the potential risks of massive unemployment.
“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 warned during an interview with Bloomberg TV's Wall Street Week.
“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. That's not on AI, that's on how we organise society,” he added.
According to Bloomberg, the four major AI hyperscalers— Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and Amazon— are projected to raise their capital spending from $360 billion this year to $420 billion in the next fiscal year.
“I believe that to make money you're going to have to replace human labour,” Hinton said.
“My worry is that the obvious way to make money out of it, apart from charging fees to use the chatbots, is by replacing jobs. The way you make a company more profitable is to replace the workers with something cheaper. And I think that’s a big part of what’s driving it.”
“Some economists say these big changes always create new jobs. It’s not clear to me that this will,” he added.
AI can do “tremendous good” in healthcare and education, Hinton said.
On being questioned if he would rather have the development of AI halted altogether, he was noncommittal. “It's not like nuclear weapons, which are only good for bad things. It’s a difficult decision, because it can do tremendous good in health care and education."
Hinton’s observations come amid widespread job reductions in the tech sector, with Amazon recently revealing plans to cut at least 14,000 corporate positions. While many leading tech firms have refrained from explicitly attributing layoffs to AI, industry experts and executives are increasingly raising concerns over hiring freezes and workforce downsizing due to the adoption of AI-driven technology.
