Of all the ways our lives will be impacted in the future, AI is going to take the maximum responsibility. It is already shifting things in the workplace, changing employment structures, reshaping our consumption needs, and developing our society in a never-before-seen manner. However, experts from around the globe say this is just the beginning of how AI will impact our world and all of our lives in it.
Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, has raised some serious concerns regarding the rise of AI and how it could potentially impact the world, especially the employment sectors. Mr. Hinton has worked on artificial neural networks for a major part of his career, and for that, he has been conferred the unofficial title, ‘The Godfather of AI.’ Such is the importance, relevance, and efficiency of his work that Geoffrey Hinton was also granted the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024.
To begin, Geoffrey Hinton has worked with AI ever since its early pioneering days. He has seen it grow, mature, and slowly become this beast of a technology in front of his eyes. Mr. Hinton talked about how the AI is still in its nascent stage, and could potentially grow into something big and scary. In his own words, he calls this growth like raising a cute, furry tiger pup. Once it grows, it could either turn out to be benevolent or could potentially kill people. Mr. Hinton has had some very good reasons to draw this parallel.
About a year or so ago, Geoffrey Hinton spoke to journalists about the non-threatening nature of AI. He said that AI, while it is a game changer, would not potentially harm jobs or employment. He has since backed down from that opinion and is now stating otherwise. Hinton can now clearly see the potentially harmful impact AI can have on jobs and the lives of people. His change of stance sprouts from the fact that how quickly and speedily AI has developed in the past few years. It’s almost as if AI is mutating itself.
Without naming many job titles, Geoffrey Hinton did awkwardly say, “If I were working at a call center, I would be very worried.” He further goes on to mention other jobs, such as a paralegal, for instance, are also critically endangered due to AI. In other words, Hinton believes any routine job, that doesn’t require much intelligence or brainstorming, is immensely under threat due to AI.
This is just the beginning of AI’s disruption of workplace society. It is aggressively advancing every day and will soon engulf our lives in most regards. Many experts, such as Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT), and Elon Musk, have clearly stated that somewhere around 70-80% of jobs will be eliminated by AI. This includes writers, lawyers, consultants, managers, etc. However, that is still years away from now. But precautionary measures are always good.
With all of the impending fear that AI brings to society, Geoffrey Hinton reveals that the primary motivation behind the creation of AI was very different. Hinton explains that he hoped that AI would help ease all of our lives by increasing productivity. AI can perform a task many times faster than any human ever could.
Moreover, it can multitask. Therefore, it was expected that workers would utilize AI to their benefit, increase their productivity, decrease their work hours, and potentially earn more. This will provide them with a lot of time for themselves and their family. Alas, this will not be the case.
Mr. Hinton and every sensible person out there are quite clear and confident that AI will not bring anything constructive, but rather destructive. The middle-class and the lower-middle-class workers won’t have the privilege of using AI to help with their jobs; they won’t be able to afford it. Instead, AI can do their entire job, and they will simply be replaced by automated machines. More so, the ones who were doing two jobs to support their family and themselves will now have to potentially do three jobs for the same lifestyle.
So, the question begs – if AI is disruptive for everybody, who will benefit from it? The answer is ‘Rich people.’ The way AI is being developed and is headed towards the future, it is only geared to benefit the rich. Those who work higher-level jobs and own a good portion of the stakes in these AI-based companies can benefit tremendously from their application.
AI will be doing most employees’ jobs with much higher efficiency at a much lower cost. The savings from this cost-effective measure will straightaway benefit those in big tech firms and higher-up positions in corporations. This can create a severe imbalance in human society.
But the threat, as per Geoffrey Hinton, doesn’t just end with that diversion that will cause pain, struggle, and trauma to those without jobs. It could have far-reaching, catastrophic consequences. One such consequence is the ‘Potential Rise of Fascism.’ In a roundtable conference with scientists, Mr. Hinton once explained how the rise of AI could lead to the rebirth of fascism in the world.
The gap between the rich and poor, as high as it is now, could widen even more with AI. The basis for this scary development is ‘Capitalism.’ Since we live in a capitalist society, big tech companies aren’t going to let a grain of AI be used for the greater good. They are most likely going to squeeze every bit of it to their benefit. They will increase their profit margins, fill their pockets with extra cash, and in the process, won’t care much if human jobs are lost as long as productivity increases.
This increasing gap between the rich and the poor, coupled with deep-seated and justified animosity between the two groups, will create breeding grounds for fascism. It will help in many sectors, such as healthcare and education, but it might make society a far worse place to inhabit. Keep in mind, Geoffrey Hinton, the Godfather of AI, raised this issue himself.
Ironically, AI will not help everyone by increasing productivity, but create a huge division in society. While these are alarming calls concerning AI, similar, if not more, doomsday-like predictions have been echoed by other experts from different domains. Journalist Raoul Pal, the CEO of Real Vision, made an even scarier prediction about AI.
Pal, speaking at the Diary of a CEO podcast, called AI the “single greatest innovation of humanity ever.” The only thing, he believes, that comes close to it is the splitting of the atom. AI is going to break the economic model as we know it. It will force us to reshape and redevelop society.
Raoul explains that everything in this world is based on the scarcity of knowledge or the scarcity of capital. That’s the reason why lawyers get paid so much, medical assistants have a job, and teachers are required to teach. AI will eliminate the difference in knowledge between a professional and a student. It aims to be something with infinite knowledge, which essentially brings down the value of knowledge to zero.
While the predictions are rife, no one surely knows the exact way in which society will change. Pal believes that eventually when machines are way more advanced than humans, society will choose a path – whether to merge with the machines or reject the machines. Which one will it be?
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