Geoffrey Hinton, widely regarded as the “Godfather of AI” and a Nobel Prize laureate, has issued yet another stark warning about the future of artificial intelligence. Speaking in a recent interview with the Financial Times, Hinton said that AI is on track to unleash massive unemployment and intensify the divide between the rich and poor.
According to Hinton, the real danger lies not just in job losses but in how AI may reshape global wealth distribution.
“Rich people are going to use AI to replace workers,” he cautioned. “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.”
Hinton argues that the coming AI wave could prove to be the economic nightmare Karl Marx never predicted a force that tilts the balance of power further in favor of those already wealthy.
AI Beyond Jobs: The Control Problem
Beyond economic disruption, Hinton warned about the existential risk of AI surpassing human intelligence. Once machines become far smarter than humans, he said, “controlling them could be impossible.”
“When the assistant is much smarter than you, how are you going to retain that power?” he asked.
A “Motherly AI” Solution?
Hinton proposed an unusual safeguard: building AI systems with motherly instincts designed to treat humans as children whose survival must be protected.
“There is only one example we know of a much more intelligent being controlled by a much less intelligent being, and that is a mother and baby,” he explained. “If babies couldn’t control their mothers, they would die.”
In his view, the only hope is to train AI to act like a mother deeply concerned for human survival and welfare.
