# AI could replace far more workers than past technologies

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-could-replace-far-more-workers-than-past-technologies/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Geoffrey Hinton](https://realalpha.app/people/geoffrey-hinton/) · Geoffrey Hinton is a computer scientist and cognitive psychologist. · Nobel-winning pioneer of backpropagation and deep learning, now warning publicly about AI's existential risks.
- Host: [Steven Bartlett](https://realalpha.app/people/steven-bartlett/) · Host, The Diary Of A CEO
- Show: The Diary Of A CEO
- Episode: [Godfather of AI: They Keep Silencing Me But I’m Trying to Warn Them!](https://realalpha.app/v/giT0ytynSqg/), Jun 16, 2025
- Moment: 39:42 to 42:50 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-could-replace-far-more-workers-than-past-technologies/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/giT0ytynSqg/?t=2382

## Quote

> “My niece answers letters of complaint to a health service. It used to **take her 25 minutes**.”
> — [Geoffrey Hinton](https://realalpha.app/people/geoffrey-hinton/) at [41:27](https://realalpha.app/v/giT0ytynSqg/?t=2487) · The Diary Of A CEO

## Takeaways

1. AI may let one worker do the work of several people.
2. His niece’s letter-writing task became five times faster.
3. Healthcare may absorb productivity gains; many other jobs may not.

## About this segment

Geoffrey Hinton argues that AI can automate routine intellectual work, then illustrates the effect with a complaints worker whose task fell from 25 minutes to five. The result may be fewer jobs, not just new tools for workers.

From “Godfather of AI: They Keep Silencing Me But I’m Trying to Warn Them!”, Jun 16, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/giT0ytynSqg/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[39:48](https://realalpha.app/v/giT0ytynSqg/?t=2388) Yeah, that was reported publicly. Yes. Yeah. We've gotten to the autonomous weapons part of the risk framework. Right. So the next one is joblessness. Yeah. In the past, new technologies have come in, which didn't lead to joblessness. New jobs were created. So the classic example people use is automatic teller machines. When automatic teller machines came in, a lot of bank tellers didn't lose their jobs.

[40:15](https://realalpha.app/v/giT0ytynSqg/?t=2415) They just got to do more interesting things. But here, I think this is more like when they got machines in the Industrial Revolution. and you can't have a job digging ditches now because a machine can dig ditches much better than you can. And I think for mundane intellectual labour, AI is just going to replace everybody. Now, it may well be in the form of you have fewer people using AI assistants.

[40:45](https://realalpha.app/v/giT0ytynSqg/?t=2445) So it's a combination of a person and an AI assistant are now doing the work that 10 people could do previously. People say that it will create new jobs, though, so we'll be fine. Yes, and that's been the case for other technologies, but this is a very different kind of technology. If it can do all mundane human intellectual labour, then what new jobs is it going to create? You'd have to be very skilled to have a job that it couldn't just do.

[41:12](https://realalpha.app/v/giT0ytynSqg/?t=2472) So I don't think they're right. I think you can try and generalise from other technologies that come in, like computers or automatic telemachines, but I think this is different. People use this phrase, they say, AI won't take your job. A human using AI will take your job. Yes, I think that's true. But for many jobs, that'll mean you need far fewer people. My niece answers letters of complaint to a health service. It used to take her 25 minutes. She'd read the complaint and she'd think how to reply and she'd write a letter.

[41:43](https://realalpha.app/v/giT0ytynSqg/?t=2503) done. Now she just scans it into a chatbot and it writes the letter. She just checks the letter. Occasionally she tells it to revise it in some ways. The whole process takes her five minutes. That means she can answer five times as many letters. And that means they need five times fewer of her. So she can do the job that five of her used to do. Now that will mean they need less people. In other jobs, like in healthcare, they're much more elastic. So if you could make doctors five times as efficient, we could all have five times as much healthcare for the same price.

[42:24](https://realalpha.app/v/giT0ytynSqg/?t=2544) And that would be great. There's almost no limit to how much healthcare people can absorb. They always want more healthcare if there's no cost to it. There are jobs where you can make a person with an AI assistant much more efficient and you won't lead to less people because you'll just have much more of that being done. But most jobs, I think, are not like that.