The Vision
The Vision
Geoffrey Hinton predicts 2026 will see AI “replace many, many jobs”. The “Godfather of AI” warns that AI’s progression means tasks double in speed every seven months - what once took an hour now takes minutes. He’s blunt about the outcome: “What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers. 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. That’s not AI’s fault, that is the capitalist system.”
The data supports his warning. Tech companies eliminated 180,000+ positions in 2025. AI was explicitly cited in nearly 50,000 U.S. job cuts (even though it may have just been an excuse). An MIT study confirms current AI systems could replace 11.7% of the U.S. workforce, representing $1.2 trillion in wages.
This path of massive unemployment, concentrated wealth, social instability, seems inevitable if we continue on our current trajectory. But what if we chose differently?
The industrial age displaced millions of farm workers, and many ended up in factories. The information age displaced factory workers through automation, and many of those became information workers. Now AI threatens to displace information workers. But where do they go?
Each previous transition followed a predictable logic: human labor shifted from physical work requiring muscle to cognitive work requiring minds. Farms to factories. Factories to offices. Physical to mental.
AI breaks this pattern. It’s not replacing our muscles - it’s replacing our minds. The cognitive work that defined the information age is precisely what AI does best.
So what’s left? What’s the next frontier of human value in an economy where machines can think?
What if the answer isn’t finding the next category of “work” for displaced workers? What if it’s fundamentally rethinking what human value means in a post-AI economy?
Consider that the two domains where humans remain irreplaceably valuable are arts and science - the creative and the curious, if you like. The pursuits that define us not as workers but as humans.
We could be cooking, singing, acting, painting, dancing, exploring, discovering, learning. We could be engaging in sports - which are themselves a perfect fusion of art and science. We could be raising children with actual time and attention. We could be caring for aging parents. We could be building communities, mentoring, creating, discovering.
All while the machines do the work.
This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a choice. The productivity gains from AI are real - Hinton himself notes that AI can accomplish in minutes what used to take hours. The question isn’t whether AI will massively increase productivity. The question is who benefits from that productivity.
Current trajectory: corporations capture productivity gains as profit. Workers are displaced. Wealth concentrates. Society destabilizes.
Alternative trajectory: society captures productivity gains as collective wealth. Workers transition to pursuits that AI cannot replicate. Value expands beyond labor. Humanity flourishes.
Hinton is clear. The technology doesn’t determine outcomes - our economic and governance structures do.
“That’s not AI’s fault, that is the capitalist system” - Geoffrey Hinton
The industrial revolution didn’t automatically create a middle class. That required:
Labor unions fighting for fair wages
Regulations limiting working hours and child labor
Public education systems preparing workers for factory jobs
Progressive taxation funding public goods
Social safety nets protecting the vulnerable
The information age didn’t automatically distribute prosperity. That required:
Antitrust enforcement preventing monopolies
Investment in research universities
Student loan systems (however flawed) enabling education access
Infrastructure investments in connectivity
Intellectual property frameworks balancing innovation and access
The Age of Arts and Science won’t happen by accident. It requires intentional structural changes to ensure AI’s productivity gains benefit humanity, not just shareholders.
Stop measuring human worth by labor productivity. When machines outproduce humans in cognitive work, defining value as “productive work” guarantees that most humans become valueless. Instead: value creation, discovery, care, community, art, culture, knowledge. These aren’t economically worthless - they’re actually the foundation of human flourishing.
When AI doubles productivity, who captures that gain? Currently: shareholders. Alternatives: progressive taxation on AI-driven profits, mandatory profit-sharing for companies deploying AI, sovereign wealth funds investing AI tax revenues, shortened work weeks with maintained compensation, universal basic services for healthcare and education.
The productivity gains are massive. Companies spent trillions on AI infrastructure, expecting returns through labor cost reduction. Those avoided labor costs represent real value that can fund: retraining programs focused on arts, sciences, creativity; public funding for cultural and scientific infrastructure; stipends for creative pursuits, learning, care work; expanded support for parents, caregivers, educators, artists, researchers.
Current education prepares students for jobs that AI is eliminating. We need education developing uniquely human capabilities: creativity, scientific curiosity, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, physical mastery. Not as hobbies, but as core human competencies.
Imagine compensating parents for child-rearing, adult children for elder care, community organizers for building social fabric, artists for cultural enrichment, amateur scientists for citizen science. Not as welfare, but as recognition that these pursuits create value that corporations can’t easily capture.
The technical capability exists. AI productivity gains can fund this transition. The obstacle is political will.
Hinton’s warning is explicit: “It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer.” Not because it must, but because our current system allows it.
Intervention requires: electing leaders who prioritize human flourishing over corporate profit, building coalitions including labor, artists, scientists, educators, creating economic structures that value creativity and curiosity, implementing progressive taxation capturing AI gains, investing in cultural and scientific infrastructure, redefining success beyond GDP metrics.
This isn’t universal basic income as a band-aid for unemployment. Hinton dismisses UBI as inadequate: it “won’t deal with human dignity” and the value people derive from purposeful activity.
This isn’t a rejection of technology. It’s redirecting technology’s benefits toward human flourishing rather than wealth concentration.
This isn’t everyone becoming professional artists. It’s everyone having time and resources to engage with art, science, creativity, discovery, community, care - the very pursuits that make us human.
This isn’t utopian fantasy. It’s a pragmatic response to economic reality. When machines can outthink humans in routine cognitive work, human value necessarily shifts to what machines cannot replicate: creativity, curiosity, care, community, and meaning.
Hinton’s 2026 prediction frames it starkly: we face a “perfect storm” combining exponential technical growth with massive infrastructure investments requiring returns through labor cost reduction. The result: mass displacement and wealth concentration—unless we intervene.
The Age of Arts and Science isn’t inevitable. Neither is mass unemployment. Both are possible futures. Which one we get depends on choices we make now about how to structure the economy, distribute AI’s productivity gains, and define human value in an age when machines can think.
We can continue on the current path: AI increases productivity, corporations capture gains as profit, workers are displaced, wealth concentrates, society destabilizes, and we face the social unrest and instability that inevitably follows mass unemployment.
Or we can choose differently: AI increases productivity, society captures gains through progressive structures, workers transition to pursuits that machines cannot replicate, value expands beyond labor, and humanity flourishes in an age where we’re finally freed from work that machines do better anyway.