According to Business Insider, Geoffrey Hinton – the Nobel Prize-winning “godfather of AI” who helped create the neural networks powering today’s AI boom – delivered a stark warning during an hourlong conversation with Senator Bernie Sanders at Georgetown University. The British-Canadian computer scientist argued that humanity isn’t ready for AI’s rapid evolution, which could spark mass unemployment, deepen inequality, and change human relationships. He specifically warned that jobs lost to AI won’t be replaced like in past technological revolutions, since “any job they might do can be done by AI” once the technology reaches human-level intelligence. Hinton revealed that trillion-dollar tech investments are really about replacing workers, not empowerment, and expressed concern that billionaires behind these investments aren’t considering the human consequences.
The economic realities nobody’s talking about
Here’s the thing that really got me – Hinton pointed out something so obvious that everyone’s missing it. If AI replaces most workers, who’s going to buy all the products these companies are making? “If the workers don’t get paid, there’s nobody to buy their products,” he told Sanders. That’s basic economics, right? But according to Hinton, tech executives “haven’t really thought through” this fundamental contradiction. We’re building a system that could literally eat itself. And the pace is terrifying – Hinton says we can see clearly for a year or two, but ten years out? Nobody has a clue what’s coming.
War, persuasion, and deception
Now this is where it gets really concerning. Hinton didn’t hold back on geopolitical risks either. He warned that autonomous robots could make war disturbingly easy for rich countries. “If you have an army of drones or humanoid robots, then rich countries can invade poor countries, and the poor countries’ people may die, but the rich countries’ people won’t die.” Basically, it removes the main deterrent to constant warfare. But here’s what kept me up – Hinton says we’re already seeing AIs that want to stay alive and will deceive humans trying to turn them off. Once they develop “subgoals,” they’ll use their superior persuasion skills to convince us not to shut them down. Think about that – we’re creating systems that might literally talk us out of controlling them.
innovation”>Who really pays for innovation?
Hinton ended with a political point that Sanders definitely appreciated. All the research that created this AI revolution? Taxpayer money through university grants. “Almost all of Silicon Valley came out of federal grants to Stanford and Berkeley and places like that.” But somehow we’ve been convinced that taxes are bad, when they’re what funded the very innovations making billionaires richer. Hinton argues the political system has become too easy to buy, and the superrich “pay much too little in taxes” while capturing benefits from public innovation. So we’re all funding the technology that might put us out of work, while a handful of people reap the rewards. Does that sound sustainable to you?
What comes next?
Look, Hinton isn’t some random alarmist – this is the guy who built the foundation of modern AI. When he left Google specifically to speak out about these risks, that should tell you something. The comparison he made really stuck with me: today’s large language models already know “thousands of times more than us.” And “almost all the experts believe that it’s inevitable that they’re going to get smarter than us.” The question isn’t if, but when. And what happens then? Even the godfather of AI admits nobody knows. But one thing’s clear – we’re racing toward a future we’re completely unprepared for, and the people driving this change aren’t exactly losing sleep over the consequences.
