‘Godfather of AI’ says billionaires like Elon Musk are right about the future of work—but he predicts mass unemployment is on its way

The long-term impact of AI is one of the most hotly debated topics in Silicon Valley.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicts every job will be transformed—and likely lead to a four-day workweek.

Other tech titans go even further: Bill Gates says humans may soon not be needed “for most things,” and Elon Musk believes most humans won’t have to work at all in “less than 20 years.” While those predictions might sound extreme, they’re not just plausible, they’re likely, said Geoffrey Hinton , the British computer scientist widely known as the “Godfather of AI.” The transition, he warned, could trigger a sweeping economic reshuffling that leaves millions of workers behind.

“It seems very likely to a large number of people that we will get massive unemployment caused by AI,” Hinton said in a November 2025 discussion with Sen.

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at Georgetown University.

“And if you ask where are these guys going to get the roughly trillion dollars they’re investing in data centers and chips…one of the main sources of money is going to be by selling people AI that will do the work of workers much cheaper,” he continued.

“And so these guys are really betting on AI replacing a lot of workers.” Hinton has grown increasingly vocal about what he sees as Big Tech’s misplaced priorities.

The industry, he previously told Fortune , is driven less by scientific progress than by short-term profits—fueling a push to replace human workers with cheaper AI systems.

His warnings come as the economics of AI face new scrutiny .

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, isn’t expected to turn a profit until at least 2030 and may need more than $207 billion to support its growth, according to HSBC estimations published in November 2025.

The future of AI is behind a fog of war Hinton’s journey from AI insider to outspoken critic underscores the high stakes of the technology he helped create.

After quitting his Google job in 2023 to speak more freely about AI’s risks, he has become one of the most prominent skeptics.

Last year, his pioneering work in machine learning earned him the Nobel Prize.

He also acknowledged AI will create new jobs, as many tech leaders predict .