Latest news with #GeoffreyHinton
Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Behind The Godfather Of AI's Terrifying Comments Lies A Valid Point About The Future Of Work
As AI reshapes the white-collar world, the blue-collar future looks more essential than ever. A few weeks ago, Geoffrey Hinton, known as the godfather of AI, went on a podcast and said some mildly terrifying things. Among his more hair-raising points: Intelligent machines could one day decide humans are no longer needed and, um, that'd be that. 'If you want to know what life's like when you're not the apex intelligence,' Hinton deadpans, 'ask a chicken.' Aside from the scare—Hinton's larger point is that we must put as much effort into preventing bad AI possibilities as we do developing good ones—he offered some interesting thoughts on the future of work, and they're applicable to our world of manufacturing. A World Of Plumbers… And Manufacturers Hinton was particularly gloomy on the future of desk jobs. He believes that a role like that of the paralegal, for instance, won't be needed for very long. 'For mundane intellectual labor, AI is just going to replace everybody,' Hinton says. There's one area, however, where he thinks humans are safe. 'It's going to be a long time before it's as good at physical manipulation as us,' Hinton says. 'So, a good bet will be to be a plumber.' That insight is especially resonant for manufacturing. While he uses plumbing as his go-to example, the larger point stands for a variety of roles across the trades, and many in manufacturing. A few to throw in the mix: manufacturing engineer, machinist, quality control technician, process technician, supply chain coordinator. It can't be overstated the level of demand for these roles right now—there are currently a half a million unfilled manufacturing jobs across the country, and by 2033, we could be short nearly 2 million, according to The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte. And the demand is even greater for young people, a point of emphasis in an industry that is seeing loads of baby boomers—and the institutional knowledge they carry with them—reach retirement age. In many cases, employees start with a good salary and can quickly move up. As one data point, hourly wages for entry-level, mid-skill manufacturing jobs in Northeast Ohio were up 21% in 2023, to $21.10 an hour. The Importance Of Creativity To be sure, American manufacturing must become more technologically advanced. That's how we compete with global powers like China and, if tariffs wind up bringing home more manufacturing operations, stand up the necessary capacity. If they haven't already, American manufacturers must start investing in technology today—full stop. That includes technologies like collaborative robots (cobots) that work safely alongside humans, AI-driven quality inspection systems, predictive maintenance software, and digital twins that simulate factory processes in real time. Hinton's comments may zero in on the future of 'physical manipulation' jobs, but in truth, a lot of careers in manufacturing's future will require creativity and problem-solving skills, with or without the physical component. We need smart and well-trained humans figuring out how to incorporate new lines, shift things around inside the plant, prioritize orders and shipments, calculate risk associated with equipment purchasing, assess next steps with regard to aging or broken machinery, and otherwise deploy human judgment and experience to maximize the business. These opportunities will only increase in the coming years. Truth be told: manufacturing jobs in America hit rock bottom years ago, as companies implemented enormous amounts of automation in the form of computer-controlled machines (I.e., CNCs) and outsourced high-labor content jobs to China. We may still see a few roles here lost to robotics and automation, but if we're doing it right, those jobs will be replaced—and then some—by a new age of the high-skill, manufacturing problem-solver. Manufacturing's Challenge: Smartly Mixing Humans And Machines Technology alone isn't the answer. In this industry, the most desirable roles will be around for a long time. 'The human role will be focused on high-level decision-making,' Kevin Johnson, managing partner at NextGen Interactive, told me during a recent conversation. 'But we need to ensure people remain an essential part of the process.' Manufacturers will have to engage in the work of retraining their workers and hiring the right people for the future. That includes partnering with local technical colleges, developing internal upskilling programs, and creating pathways for nontraditional candidates to enter the field. As they implement technology, they'll get more out of their employment dollars and thus be able to pay workers better. And when employees are trained to use advanced tools, their jobs become not just safer and more efficient—but more meaningful. In other words, mixing technology advancement with the right kind of hiring and training programs will produce a future where we all win The Opportunity Awaiting Manufacturers In The Age Of AI Hinton's comments offer food for thought. People who are smarter on AI than myself should heed his warning and establish the appropriate guardrails. But I'm not so sure humanity will succumb any time soon. For manufacturers, his most useful insight isn't about existential threats—it's about opportunity. As AI reshapes the white-collar world, the blue-collar future looks more essential than ever. Manufacturers have a chance to lead this moment—not just by adopting smarter technologies, but by building the workforce that can use them. Manufacturers have struggled to fill their open roles for years. Young people willing to engage with the idea of alternative career paths will find a career in manufacturing awaiting that is financially rewarding, conducive to work-life balance, and favorable to personal and professional growth. For those willing to get their hands on the tools of tomorrow—both digital and physical—manufacturing offers a future that's not just safe from AI, but powered by it.
Scotsman
4 days ago
- Health
- Scotsman
Scottish university's new AI medical breakthrough might just save your life
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... According to Professor Geoffrey Hinton, aka 'the Godfather of Artificial Intelligence', there is a 10 to 20 per cent chance that AI will cause the extinction of humanity. Given his expertise in the subject – a former Google vice-president, he won the 2018 Turing Award for his work on artificial neural networks that simulate human intelligence – it's a worrying thought that we must take seriously. However, there is also no doubting the extraordinary benefits of AI. For example, Dundee University researchers have now used it to develop a scan that can help predict a person's chance of having a heart attack or stroke within the next ten years. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Our eyes can provide a 'window' into the health of our hearts (Picture: Randy Montoya/Sandia National Laboratories) | Getty Images As consultant cardiologist Dr Ify Mordi explained, 'it may be surprising, but the eyes are a window to the heart' and problems with blood vessels in the eye may also mean problems with those supplying the heart.
Gizmodo
5 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
OpenAI, Google, and Meta Researchers Warn We May Lose the Ability to Track AI Misbehavior
Over 40 scientists from the world's leading AI institutions, including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and Meta, have come together to call for more research in a particular type of safety monitoring that allows humans to analyze how AI models 'think.' The scientists published a research paper on Tuesday that highlighted what is known as chain of thought (CoT) monitoring as a new yet fragile opportunity to boost AI safety. The paper was endorsed by prominent AI figures like OpenAI co-founders John Schulman and Ilya Sutskever as well as Nobel Prize laureate known as the 'Godfather of AI,' Geoffrey Hinton. In the paper, the scientists explained how modern reasoning models like ChatGPT are trained to 'perform extended reasoning in CoT before taking actions or producing final outputs.' In other words, they 'think out loud' through problems step by step, providing them a form of working memory for solving complex tasks. 'AI systems that 'think' in human language offer a unique opportunity for AI safety: we can monitor their chains of thought (CoT) for the intent to misbehave,' the paper's authors wrote. The researchers argue that CoT monitoring can help researchers detect when models begin to exploit flaws in their training, manipulate data, or fall victim to malicious user manipulation. Any issues that are found can then either be 'blocked, or replaced with safer actions, or reviewed in more depth.' OpenAI researchers have already used this technique in testing to find cases when AI models have had the phrase 'Let's Hack' in their CoT. Current AI models perform this thinking in human language, but the researchers warn that this may not always be the case. As developers rely more on reinforcement learning, which prioritizes correct outputs rather than how they arrived at them, future models may evolve away from using reasoning that humans can't easily understand. Additionally, advanced models might eventually learn to suppress or obscure their reasoning if they detect that it's being monitored. In response, the researchers are urging AI developers to track and evaluate the CoT monitorability of their models and to treat this as a critical component of overall model safety. They even recommend that it become a key consideration when training and deploying new models.
Medscape
5 days ago
- Health
- Medscape
Medscape 2050: Robert Wachter
Medscape 2050: The Future of Medicine Have you tried an AI tool yet? Robert Wachter, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, wants to know. In fact, Wachter will tell you that 'in order to be a responsible physician or probably any professional, you should be trying them today.' Why is this so urgent? Because physicians – perhaps more than most other professionals – need support. Did you know that 1 out of 5 medical records is longer than Moby Dick? (That's not an estimate; it's been studied.) How can a doctor comb through over 600 pages of notes in the five minutes before a patient visit and feel confident that they haven't missed anything? This is just one of many 'impossible' tasks, Wachter says, that doctors face in today's healthcare system. The 'Holy Grail' of AI, for Wachter, will be when these tools can reliably provide 'clinical decision support.' He envisions a system where AI is seamlessly integrated into the EHR, analyzing literature, evidence, and recommendations, and delivering that information in a form that is 'useful and actionable.' Are you worrying that AI is coming for your job? Don't. These fears are overstated, Wachter says, mentioning Geoffrey Hinton's famous suggestion in 2016 that we 'should stop training radiologists now.' And yet, almost a decade later, radiology is still a crucial specialty. Even as we look toward a 'transformative moment' when medical AI will make clinicians' lives a lot easier, we shouldn't count ourselves out. 'If you'd asked me 15 years ago, which comes first: the radiologists are out of business, or I sit in the backseat of a driverless car and fall asleep on my way home,' says Wachter, who is a fan of Waymo, 'I would've said the radiologists are toast.' And he would have been wrong.
NDTV
7 days ago
- Business
- NDTV
The Great Indian IT Crash: Why You, An Engineer, Still Can't Find A Job
Recently, Geoffrey Hinton, the man who helped create AI, suggested that in the face of AI, entry-level jobs in the tech industry are plummeting. His advice is not to lose sight of ordinary jobs. Hinton half-jokingly (but also seriously) suggested plumbing as a future-proof career. Why? Because it's physical, not digital; it requires hands-on, practical problem-solving in the real world; and it's extremely difficult to automate or outsource. Hinton's advice isn't just about pipes - it's a wake-up call. TL;DR? Hold On Guys Yes, this article is a bit of a long read. But if you are a young techie (or hoping to be one), or even just standing at the edge of the job market, don't roll your eyes and go away, muttering "too long, didn't read (TL;DR)". Stick with me till the end. This isn't just another article - it's about your career. Just your entire future. Here We Go, Then It was the techie world's heyday. I still remember covering a glitzy event at the Taj Mumbai back in 2004. TCS had just become India's first billion-dollar IT company. Two of my young cousins were flying off to the US on L-1 visas, armed with nothing more than some decent C++ skills and a folder full of dreams. For families in Delhi, Dubai or Dhanbad, landing an IT job back then wasn't just employment, it was validation. Twenty-odd years ago, grabbing an entry-level gig at Infosys or Wipro was the holy grail for Indian engineers. You got a stable salary and a work visa if you were lucky. Campuses ran like conveyor belts, producing Level 1 coders who could slide right into testing software or logging support tickets. I saw this boom period up close. India's IT giants weren't just exporting talent. They were importing global respect. I once visited the Infosys campus in Mysore, where dozens of young Americans were being trained in tech skills they'd have paid a fortune to learn back home. The tables had turned, and for a while, India was at the centre of the digital universe But today? That conveyor belt is screeching. In some places, it's practically stalled. The jobs that once launched millions of careers are quietly vanishing. Yes, welcome to the slow, silent collapse of the entry-level IT job. This is not just a desi drama. It is unfolding on a global stage. And this shake-up is just getting started. India: From Campus Hires To Cautious Silence For decades, India's $245-billion-huge IT industry thrived on volume. Fresh grads from engineering colleges filled Level 1 (L1) roles: basic coding, software maintenance, tech support - low-risk tasks that big global firms outsourced en masse. The system worked. India became the back office of the world. But AI is now rapidly upending that system. Here's what the Indian tech media reported in recent days: Wipro, which hired 38,000 freshers in FY23, is down to just 10,000 in FY25. TCS added only 625 employees in Q4 FY25. Infosys has delayed fresher onboarding for over a year. A TeamLease Digital survey suggests that only 1.6 lakh freshers will find jobs in FY25, compared to 2.3 lakh just two years ago. This isn't a talent problem. It's a tech disruption problem. AI: The Great Equaliser (And Eliminator) AI is reshaping what it means to be "skilled". Tools like GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT and other agentic platforms are taking over tasks once assigned to entry-level engineers - from writing boilerplate code to basic bug fixing. A media report quoted Mohit Saxena, CTO at InMobi, as saying: "AI has lowered the bar for becoming an average engineer. But at the same time, it's raised the bar for becoming a great one." What it means is that if you are not adapting, you are fading into oblivion. AI is not just helping elite engineers work faster, it is replacing low-end roles outright. And it is clear it is doing it quietly, line by line, task by task. Double Trouble For Indian Techies Indian tech workers in the US are facing a twin problem. As AI-powered automation sweeps through the industry, they are facing a twin trouble: widespread layoffs and mounting immigration uncertainty. Add rising political hostility to the mix, and the future looks anything but stable. For years, Indian professionals have been the silent engines behind America's tech boom - coding, analysing and keeping systems running. But now, things are changing fast. The rules are shifting and the safety net they once relied on is starting to fray. The Rise Of GCCs While big Indian IT firms like Wipro and Infosys are slowing down on hiring freshers, Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are quietly stepping up - but on their own terms. These centres are the tech and innovation hubs of global giants like Goldman Sachs, Siemens and Walmart. Unlike traditional IT companies, they're not hiring in bulk. They are being choosy, focusing on smaller, high-skilled teams rather than mass recruitment. They are filtering for quality over quantity. They are recruiting from tier-1 institutions such as IITs, IIITs, and NITs. Internships have become their recruitment pipelines. No internship, no entry. What they want are thinkers, not coders; not JIRA (developers, testers or support staff) ticket handlers, but problem solvers who understand customer logic, regulatory frameworks, and domain-specific tech stacks. In a recent article, Neeti Sharma of TeamLease Digital explains, "The combination of engineering, technology and domain is what GCCs look for." The bar is high and rising. Not Just An Indian Crisis The unemployment rate for computer science graduates in the US is 7.5% - nearly double the national average of 4.1%. According to The Times, some British tech graduates are applying to 1,000 jobs just to land an interview. Bloomberg reports that AI could replace over 50% of tasks done by market research analysts and sales reps. For managers, it's under 25%. So if you are young and entry-level, AI is more likely to replace you than your boss. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 is even starker: as many as 40% of global employers plan to reduce the workforce due to AI. The report says that 170 million new jobs will be created this decade - but 75 million jobs will vanish. And the new roles being created require entirely new skillsets. The message is clear: adapt or be automated. Teaching 2015 In 2025 Our classrooms are our biggest problem. Various reports suggest that less than 12% of Indian engineering colleges currently offer full-time coursework in AI, data science, or machine learning. According to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), only 7% of faculty have any hands-on experience with generative AI tools. This mismatch is reflected in hiring data, too. The India Skills Report 2025 states that just 47% of engineering graduates are considered "employable" in the tech industry. The truth is that most campuses are preparing students for jobs that AI is already doing better now. Experts argue that this isn't just a skills mismatch - it is a potential social crisis. Imagine a family investing Rs 10-15 lakh in a student's B. Tech education, hostel, coaching and job prep. Now imagine that student sitting jobless for 18 months post-graduation, watching classmates pivot to gig work, delivery jobs or sales roles in unrelated sectors. It is happening. In Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, you will find PG hostels full of jobless coders, waiting, scrolling job portals. Wondering what happened to the IT dream. This is a story of a generation staring up at a ladder that no longer reaches the sky. Yet, all is not lost. Glimmer Of Hope? AI is not just killing jobs. It is creating new ones, just not in the old roles. There is an exploding demand for AI support roles, such as prompt engineers, junior AI trainers, chatbot testers, model auditors, so on and so forth. Many of these don't require elite degrees or several years of experience, but just curiosity, adaptability and a willingness to learn new tools. A post on the 'Indian Workplace' subreddit highlights the ordeal of a young software graduate "stuck in a loop" - submitting hundreds of job applications but receiving no callbacks. The post, which quickly resonated with thousands of users, captures the quiet despair shared by many young graduates and junior developers navigating today's overcrowded and AI-disrupted job market. It's not just an isolated complaint, it reflects a broader reality: fierce competition, shrinking roles and fewer clear entry points into the tech world. So What Needs to Change? Start with the curriculum. AI and machine learning should be core, not electives. Students need to learn systems thinking, prompt writing and real-world context, not just syntax. Expand degree-plus-internship models that let students earn and learn alongside real tech work. It's not just about skills, it's about confidence too. Skilling missions must scale. India's FutureSkills PRIME is a start, but we need a national AI readiness push with funding, incentives and commitment from startups to MNCs. Bring startup labs to campuses. Real tools, real prototypes, real failures. Replace handwritten exams with hackathons. Redefine "entry-level". Forget old L1 jobs. Think AI trainers, prompt engineers, ethics testers, and data labourers. If you are a student, know this: AI isn't your enemy - it's your co-pilot. Stackable micro-degrees, no-code tools, problem-solving skills - anyone from anywhere can thrive. The old career ladder may be broken. But the highway to new-age tech roles is wide open. Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
