- Ex-Google vice president Geoffrey Hinton: ‘People get self-respect from jobs’
- He called for universal basic income to pay for rent and stop people starving
A tech pioneer behind the rise of AI has said that citizens should be paid a universal basic income to counter the controversial technology’s devastating effect on jobs.
Former Google vice president Geoffrey Hinton said AI and robots would be ‘very bad for society’ because the millions of workers left jobless by the technology will not enjoy the wealth resulting from the boom in productivity.
Speaking to the BBC‘s Newsnight, the academic said: ‘I certainly believe in a universal basic income.
‘But I don’t think that’s enough because a lot of people get their self-respect from the jobs they do.’
He continued: ‘If you pay everybody a universal basic income, that solves the problem of them starving and not being able to pay the rent but that doesn’t solve the self-respect problem.’
Former Google vice president Geoffrey Hinton (pictured) said AI and robots would be ‘very bad for society’ because the millions of workers left jobless by the technology will not enjoy the wealth resulting from the boom in productivity
Speaking to the BBC’s Newsnight, the academic said: ‘I certainly believe in a universal basic income. ‘But I don’t think that’s enough because a lot of people get their self-respect from the jobs they do’ (Stock Photo)
The expert, who said he had raised the idea of universal basic income at Downing Street, warned that many blue-collar and ‘mid-level intellectual jobs’ will disappear because of AI, but predicted that plumbing could be safe from the march of the robots.
‘My best bet about a job that is safe is plumbing, because these things [AI] aren’t yet very good at physical manipulation,’ he said. ‘That will probably be the last thing they are very good at.’
His warning comes the International Monetary Fund predict that 40 per cent of jobs worldwide will be affected by AI. And the Institute for Public Policy Research has said eight million jobs in the UK could be lost with the introduction of AI in the workplace.
Hinton, who quit Google in 2023 to sound the alarm about AI, said he was pleased that the world was now taking its ‘existential threat’ to humanity seriously, as well as its impact on society.
‘I am very worried about AI taking over lots of mundane jobs,’ he said. ‘That should be a good thing. It’s going to lead to a big increase in productivity, which leads to a big increase in wealth, and if that wealth was equally distributed that would be great, but it’s not going to be.
‘In the systems we live in, that wealth is going to go to the rich and not to the people whose jobs get lost, and that’s going to be very bad for society, I believe.
‘It’s going to increase the gap between rich and poor, which increases the chances of Right-wing populists getting elected,’ he warned.
Only days ago, Sainsbury’s signed a deal with Microsoft to use the technology giant’s AI tools to improve the shopping experience for customers and help staff save time to focus on key tasks.
The expert, who said he had raised the idea of universal basic income at Downing Street, warned that many blue-collar and ‘mid-level intellectual jobs’ will disappear because of AI, but predicted that plumbing could be safe from the march of the robots (Stock Photo)
Rishi Sunak is expected to say on Tuesday: ‘To unlock the benefits of AI, we must also work together to ensure it is safe’
And on Tuesday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will co-host a virtual session of world leaders and tech bosses with President Yoon Suk Yeol of Korea.
Mr Sunak is expected to say: ‘To unlock the benefits of AI, we must also work together to ensure it is safe.’
A Whitehall source said: ‘Britain continues to show global leadership on one of the defining technological and societal challenges of our age.’ The source added: ‘Managed safely, AI will continue improving our quality of life and growing our economy.’