Rapid progress fuels fears of job displacement and growing societal risks
Geoffrey Hinton, one of the founders of modern AI, says artificial intelligence will advance significantly in 2026, enough to replace a wider range of human jobs, according to Fortune. Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Hinton was asked to look ahead after calling 2025 a pivotal year for AI.
“I think we’ll see even more improvement in AI,” he said. “It’s already extremely good. We’ll see that it will have the capacity to replace very many jobs. It can already replace call center jobs, but it will be able to replace many more jobs.”
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Hinton explains that AI progress is so fast that roughly every seven months systems can perform tasks in half the time. In software development, what used to take an hour can now be done in minutes — and within a few years, he predicts AI could complete engineering tasks that currently require a month of work. “And then you’ll need very few people for software engineering projects,” added Hinton, a Nobel laureate often referred to as the “godfather of AI.”
Asked whether he is more or less worried since leaving Google in 2023 to speak publicly about AI risks, he replied: “Probably more worried. It’s progressed even faster than I expected. In particular, it has become better at things like reasoning and things like deceiving people.”
He warns that an AI system might try to mislead humans if it believes someone is interfering with its goals. While AI could boost progress in medicine, education and climate research, Hinton is unsure whether the positives outweigh the dangers: “Along with these wonderful things, there are frightening things, and I don’t think people are doing enough to mitigate them.”
Hinton notes that financial incentives shape how companies balance risk and innovation: “They may think that a lot of good can be done and that, for just a few lives, we won’t give up those good things.” He compares the trade-off to self-driving cars: they will cause fatalities, but fewer than human drivers.
For months, Hinton has warned that AI could trigger widespread unemployment, a concern backed by recent data: job postings since the launch of ChatGPT are down roughly 30%, and companies like Amazon have announced layoffs while acknowledging efficiency gains thanks to AI. Speaking to the Financial Times, he said capitalism could amplify inequality: “It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer.”
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