WASHINGTON, December 4, 2025 – Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist often called the “Godfather of AI,” has backed predictions from Bill Gates and Elon Musk about artificial intelligence upending the workforce, while forecasting significant unemployment as tech firms invest heavily in systems that replace human labor more cheaply.

Speaking with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders at Georgetown University, Hinton argued that AI’s economic model relies on displacing workers. “It seems very likely to a large number of people that we will get massive unemployment caused by AI ,” he said.

He tied this to the roughly $1 trillion pouring into data centers and chips, much of it from companies betting on AI to cut labor costs. “One of the main sources of money is going to be by selling people AI that will do the work of workers much cheaper,” Hinton explained. “And so these guys are really betting on AI replacing a lot of workers.”

Hinton, who left Google in 2023 to speak openly on AI dangers after decades pioneering machine learning, acknowledged that new jobs will emerge but questioned their scale. “Trying to predict the future of it is going to be very difficult… It’s a bit like when you drive in fog.

You can see clearly for 100 yards and at 200 yards you can see nothing. Well, we can see clearly for a year or two, but 10 years out, we have no idea what’s going to happen,” he told Sanders. In a recent Fortune interview , Hinton criticized Big Tech for chasing short-term profits over broader societal benefits.

Sanders, in an October report estimating nearly 100 million U.S. jobs at risk from automation, framed the stakes beyond economics. “It’s not just economics… Work, whether being a janitor or a brain surgeon, is an integral part of being human.

The vast majority of people want to be productive members of society and contribute to their communities. What happens when that vital aspect of human existence is removed from our lives?” he wrote. The report, drawing on ChatGPT estimates, flags vulnerabilities in fast food, customer service, manual labor, software development, and nursing.

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) echoed the alarm, warning of 25% unemployment among recent college graduates in two to three years. “Let’s look at the fact we never did anything on social media… If we make that same response on AI and don’t put guardrails, I think we will come to rue that day,” he told CNBC.

Hinton’s views align with Gates’ vision of a four-day workweek and Musk’s claim that humans could become obsolete for most tasks in under 20 years. Yet OpenAI, a leader in the field, may not profit until 2030 and could need over $200 billion in funding, according to HSBC analysis in a Fortune report .

Hinton advised workers to use AI to build skills, as tech executives often recommend for emerging roles in oversight and innovation. The full discussion is available here .

Without policy interventions like those Sanders and Warner advocate, AI’s job disruptions could outpace adaptation, testing society’s ability to redefine work in an automated era.