‘Massive unemployment’: Godfather of AI makes huge admission
The man who helped design the technology behind ChatGPT has issued an extremely ominous warning about the impacts of AI.
The man known as the “godfather of AI” has issued an ominous warning about the disproportionate impact the technology is likely to have on the world.
Geoffrey Hinton is a renowned computer scientist who was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is celebrated for developing neural networks, which helped lay the foundation behind many of today’s artificial intelligence (AI) models, including ChatGPT, facial recognition and self-driving cars.
In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Professor Hinton claimed AI advancements could result in widespread job losses, leading to people becoming “poorer”.
“What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers,” he said.
“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.”
However, Prof Hinton said this wouldn’t be AI’s fault, claiming that it is just “the capitalist system”.
MORE:Huge ChatGPT flaw ruining careers
Despite helping create the technology used in many AI systems, he has been vocal about the ramifications it could have if not applied properly.
During the Financial Times interview, Prof Hinton also said there was “very little doubt” that AI is going to continue to get smarter.
He questioned how humans were going to retain their power when the technology becomes “much smarter” than them.
“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 … If babies couldn’t control their mothers, they would die,” he said, adding that this is the type of relationship we should be aiming for with AI.
He believes creating this technology to essentially become “mothers” to us is the “only hope” for humanity as “the mother is very concerned about preserving the life of the baby”.
This is far from the first ominous warning Prof Hinton has issued in recent times, having also claimed there was a 10 to 20 per cent chance the technology could “wipe out” humanity.
Previously, he has also advocated for a pause in AI developments, along with signing multiple letters opposing OpenAI becoming a for-profit company.
Prof Hinton isn’t the only person who has to issue warnings about AI, particularly around the impact it could have on jobs.
Analysis from Australian policy organisation the Social Policy Group (SPG) recently found if Australia maintains its current pace of AI adoption, one third of the workforce could experience a period of unemployment by 2030.
Earlier this year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, warned the technology could eliminate half of all entry-level, white-collar jobs within the next five years.
In a May interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the 42-year-old said that politicians and businesses are not prepared for the spike in unemployment rates AI could prompt.
“AI is starting to get better than humans at almost all intellectual tasks, and we’re going to collectively, as a society, grapple with it,” Mr Amodei said.
“AI is going to get better at what everyone does, including what I do, including what other CEOs do.”
MORE: How to cope with job loss
The technology that companies like his are building, Mr Amodei said, could boost unemployment in America as high as 20 per cent by 2030.
Anthropic’s AI can work nearly seven hours a day, he said, and has the skills typically required of entry-level corporate workers – “the ability to summarise a document, analyse a bunch of sources and put it into a report, write computer code” to the same standard “as a smart college student”.
“We can see where the trend is going, and that’s what’s driving some of the concern (about AI in the workforce),” Mr Amodei said.
Associate Professor of employment law at the University of Technology Sydney, Giuseppe Carabetta, also recently told news.com.au he has already seen jobs across all levels of the service industries offloaded to AIs.
It’s a shift he says has become the “new outsourcing”.
“From massage therapists’ to physios’ administrative staff who respond to queries, to large retailers using “chat lines” run by AI … to other businesses, including smaller ones, replacing or reducing staff with a “bot” which responds instantaneously when you call to make an appointment,” Associate Professor Carabetta said.
“At this level, we’ve had AI for some time without necessarily realising it.
“At best, the argument is obviously that it makes things more efficient (except when there is a ‘communication’ or technology breakdown).
“But at worse, it can simply be about cost-cutting or trying to compete not on the basis of technologically driven productivity but savings on the wages bill. In these sectors, it has become, or will become the new outsourcing.”
