Growing advances in artificial intelligence could lead to major job losses and deeper global risks as early as 2026, according to AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton.
Speaking in a recent interview with a news channel, the researcher often called the Godfather of AI said his concerns have increased as the technology evolves faster than expected. He repeated his warning that there is a 10 to 20 percent chance that AI could take over the world, describing it as a “very real fear” shared by many in the technology sector.
“I’m probably more worried. It’s progressed even faster than I thought. In particular, it’s gotten better at doing things like reasoning and also at things like deceiving people,” Hinton said.
When asked about the impact of AI in 2026, Hinton said, “We’re going to see AI get even better. It’s already extremely good.”
He explained that AI is already replacing jobs in call centers and will soon disrupt many other professions. “Each 7 months or so, it gets to be able to do tasks that are about twice as long,” he said.
Hinton noted that AI once handled only a few minutes of coding but can now complete “whole projects that are like an hour long.” He warned that in the coming years, AI will be able to manage software engineering projects lasting months. “Then there’ll be very few people needed for software engineering projects,” he said.
Despite the risks, Hinton acknowledged the positive impact of AI. He agreed with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s view that AI is the “single most impactful technology of our time.”
“So there are a lot of wonderful effects of AI. It’ll make healthcare much better. It’ll make education much better. It’ll enable us to design wonderful new drugs and wonderful new materials that may deal with climate change,” Hinton said.
He added that AI will outperform humans in prediction based tasks, including weather forecasting.
On whether companies developing AI are concerned about risks, Hinton said views differ. He said OpenAI was “very concerned with the risks” earlier but has shifted toward placing “more emphasis on profit.” He added that Meta has “always been very concerned with profit and less with safety.” Anthropic, he said, remains highly focused on safety while also pursuing profitability.
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