AI is Going to Create Massive Unemployment, Warns AI Godfather Geoffrey Hinton
The Nobel laureate also dismissed the idea of a universal basic income as a solution stating that cash payments can never replace the sense of dignity people derive from their work.
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[Image source: Chetan Jha/MITSMR Middle East]
Seventy-seven-year-old Geoffrey Hinton, whose work on artificial neural networks earned him the title ‘the Godfather of AI,’ has warned that the very technology meant to enrich jobs could end up destroying them.
Artificial intelligence has made significant strides in the last few years to become one of the most advanced technologies of the 21st century. While the emerging tech boasts of its own set of benefits, the list of concerns persists.
Hinton shared his views with Financial Times on AI replacing human workforce. “What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers,” Hinton 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,” he added.
A recent Goldman Sachs article has raised concerns, noting that AI innovations could displace 6-7% of the US workforce if widely adopted. For instance, jobs such as bank tellers, postal service clerks, cashiers and ticket clerks, data entry clerks, statistical, finance and insurance clerks, and door-to-door sales workers, news and street vendors, are among the fastest declining roles, as these are most susceptible to automation by AI.
However, he clarified, “That’s not AI’s fault, that is the capitalist system.”
The Nobel laureate also dismissed the idea of a universal basic income as a solution, something which he urged the UK government to explore, stating that cash payments can never replace the sense of dignity people derive from their work.
Hinton also spoke about information overload in society, stating that the world of information that AI opens for people is scary. “A normal person assisted by AI will soon be able to build bioweapons, and that is terrible. Imagine if an average person in the street could make a nuclear bomb,” he said.
Unregulated chatbot usage has proven to be fatal in recent times, particularly for teenagers, and has been used as an information gathering tool for unlawful activities. “We are at a point in history where something amazing is happening,” he said, adding, “it may be amazingly good, and it may be amazingly bad.”
