AI godfather predicts – and warns – his creation is about to put a lot of folks out of work
Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the “Godfather of AI,” is now warning that artificial intelligence will rapidly result in a massive amount of unemployment that will have an even greater impact on the economy than COVID-19, and will lead to an even larger wealth gap.
Hinton’s Major Predictions
Hinton states that AI will be used by the rich to eliminate workers at a massive scale, creating massive unemployment and massive profits for the people who control the technology.
You shouldn’t fear immigrants taking your job, you should fear robots.”
– Sead Fadilpasic, staff writer for theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. He is a seasoned journalist with more than a decade of experience. He covers B2B tech, IT enterprise, cybersecurity and blockchain topics.
Hinton states that the goal should not be to introduce new technologies and blame AI or technology for the displacement of countless workers. He insists the reason for the displacement of workers is how our capitalist society operates to prioritize profit over the well-being of society as a whole.
Wider Warnings by Experts
Other AI experts, including Roman Yampolskiy have predicted that nearly every job, including the more basic jobs of manual labor and coding, can be replaced by AI by 2030, and unemployment could reach 99%, should automation happen as rapidly as suggested.
“I visualise a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I’m rooting for the machines.”
—Claude Shannon, American mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist, cryptographer and inventor known as the “father of information theory” and the man who laid the foundations of the Information Age.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, suddenly predicts that up to half of white-collar jobs, entry-level included, could vanish in the next five years, pushing the unemployment rate of 10%-20%.
And there is some evidence already appearing that AI is starting to eliminate work opportunities, especially for anyone entering the job market at this time.
Economic and Social Effects
These warnings revolve around the belief that wealth will only be concentrated in an extremely small number of people or corporations, while the rest of the population becomes poorer and unable to find work.
“I don’t want to really scare you, but it was alarming how many people I talked to who are highly placed people in AI who have retreats that are sort of ‘bug out’ houses, to which they could flee if it all hits the fan.”
—James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, told the Washington Post
Hinton predicts that while it is hard to figure out a timeline, disruption is inevitable, and if you are waiting for directors or workers to mass lay off or strike, it may be too late.
Hinton and other leading experts warn that, unless we completely overhaul how a capitalistic economy operates, advanced AI will create an economic and social divide larger than anything we have experienced, with rising unemployment, widening inequality, and profits held by a fewer number of people.
AI Jobs Prediction
Everybody’s heard the doomsday proclamations: robots are going to take our jobs. Not just factory work, service work, or deliveries – but also white-collar jobs.
It’s still difficult to imagine a robot could one day be a suitable replacement for many of the most complex and thinking jobs. I know we don’t have any AI capable of decision-making in real time, but we are progressing so rapidly to a point in time where we have an executive robot that can’t be far away. It is no longer about if, it’s about when.
So yes, sometime within the next 30 – 40 years, some robot will more than likely take your job. I don’t care what your job is. If you cut grass, a robot will do it better. If you write for news outlets or magazines, a robot will write better articles. If you are a doctor, AI will not only help you in finding a diagnosis from its millions of case studies and medical journals, but it will also be a superior doctor in “some” ways.
And as Hinton noted, our cutthroat capitalistic culture is half the problem. Aside from doing our jobs as well as we do them, intelligent robots will be cheaper, faster, and infinitely more reliable than humans. And they’ll be able to work 168 hours a week, not just 40. What capitalist would continue to employ humans in that scenario?
Please share your AI job predictions and warnings below.
