AI 'godfather' Geoffrey Hinton's BIG warning over jobs, says these professions should be ‘terrified’ of...

Geoffrey Hinton is known for his groundbreaking work in neural networks in the late 1970s. He is also popularly called the 'Godfather of AI'. The 77-year-old has now raised fresh concerns over artificial intelligence (AI), warning that many white-collar roles could soon be replaced. In a recent interview on the podcast Diary of a CEO, Hinton warned that AI could soon replace a significant portion of white-collar workers, and they should brace themselves for 'mass joblessness'.

“I think for mundane intellectual labour, AI is just going to replace everybody,” Hinton said, referring to routine, white-collar tasks that require cognitive effort but less creativity. He explained that instead of a team of 10, one person working with an AI assistant could handle the same workload. “Some roles will be replaced by humans working with an AI assistant rather than just the technology,” he said, “but that means one person will do what used to be the work of 10 people.” 

Some jobs are safer: Hinton

Hinton also said some jobs are safer, such as plumbing. He added it is a good choice because machines won’t be able to do physical jobs anytime soon. Hinton further said that in the future, only those with very special or advanced skills may be safe from losing their jobs to AI.

Hinton shared that he came across a recent article that said many university graduates are already finding it hard to get jobs. One reason could be that companies have started using AI to do the kind of work these graduates would normally do. He explained that this new technology is very different from earlier ones. His comments came at a time when many Gen Z workers, discouraged by a harsh white-collar job market, are reportedly shifting toward blue-collar trades.

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Who is Geoffrey Hinton?

Hinton is a British-Canadian computer scientist, cognitive scientist, and cognitive psychologist. In 2024, he bagged the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on machine learning. Hinton is now a professor emeritus in computer science at the University of Toronto.

From 2013 to 2023, he divided his time working for Google (Google Brain) and the University of Toronto before publicly announcing his departure from Google in May 2023. In 2017, he co-founded and became the chief scientific advisor of the Vector Institute in Toronto.