Artificial intelligence could cause mass job losses with companies increasingly using the technology to accomplish work that humans did so far, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton has warned.

Hinton, called the ‘Godfather of AI’, said tech companies are spending huge amounts of money on AI because they believe it can help them replace many workers and cut costs, according to Fortune.

He made the comments during a discussion with US Senator Bernie Sanders at Georgetown University in November 2025. “It seems very likely to a large number of people that we will get massive unemployment caused by AI,” he said.

Hinton said companies are spending about $1 trillion on AI data centres and computer chips.

“And if you ask where these guys are 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 added.

“And so, these guys are really betting on AI replacing a lot of workers,” Hinton stated.

He also acknowledged that AI will create new jobs. However, he said he does not expect that there will be enough new jobs to replace all the jobs that AI could take away.

He also said it is difficult to know exactly how AI will change the world. The next one or two years may be easier to predict, but it is much harder to say what AI will be capable of 10 years from now.

“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 said.

His warning comes as some of the world’s biggest technology leaders predict major changes to the way people work.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said AI could transform every job and can lead to a four-day working week. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has suggested that humans may not be needed for most tasks in the future.

Elon Musk has gone even further, predicting that most people may eventually not need to work at all, possibly within less than 20 years.

In a report released in October 2025, Sanders said nearly 100 million jobs in the US could eventually be displaced by automation. The estimate, which was partly based on figures generated by ChatGPT, included workers in fast food, customer service and manual labour.

US Senator Mark Warner has also warned that younger workers could feel the impact first. He said unemployment among recent college graduates could rise to as much as 25% over the next two to three years if AI disrupts entry-level jobs.