Geoffrey Hinton, widely regarded as the "Godfather of AI" for his foundational work on neural networks, has issued a stark warning about the societal consequences of artificial intelligence, predicting widespread job loss and growing inequality. Speaking to the Financial Times, Hinton said the rise of AI could lead to massive unemployment as wealthy individuals and corporations use the technology to replace human workers. He emphasized that the problem lies not with AI itself, but with the capitalist system that incentivizes profit over people. "What's actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers," Hinton said. "It's going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits. It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer." The 77-year-old researcher, who won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to AI and spent over a decade at Google before leaving in 2023, expressed deep concern about the erosion of human dignity. He dismissed universal basic income (UBI) as an insufficient solution, arguing that while it may provide financial relief, it cannot replace the sense of purpose and identity people gain from meaningful work. "Universal basic income won't deal with human dignity," he said. "People get their worth from their jobs." Hinton’s concerns come at a time when AI is rapidly transforming industries. While he remains hopeful that AI could bring breakthroughs in healthcare and education—personal motivations rooted in the loss of two wives to cancer—he believes the current trajectory favors economic concentration over broad societal benefit. Not all tech leaders share his pessimism. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has long advocated for UBI, even funding one of the largest UBI experiments in the United States. Elon Musk has similarly suggested that in a future where AI handles most labor, UBI could allow humans to pursue creative and personal fulfillment. Investor Vinod Khosla has gone further, forecasting that AI will perform 80% of the work in 80% of jobs, making UBI essential to prevent extreme inequality. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei acknowledges the need for new social systems but views UBI as only a partial answer, calling for broader structural reforms. Hinton, however, remains unconvinced. Though he once supported UBI as a potential policy tool, he now believes it fails to address the deeper issue of lost purpose. As AI advances, Hinton warns society stands at a pivotal moment—facing the possibility of an era of unprecedented progress or one of deepening division. "We are at a point in history where something amazing is happening," he said. "It may be amazingly good, and it may be amazingly bad."