MedEd AI Epoch: 130 “AI Will Make Most People Poorer” An Ethical Dilemma We Can’t Ignore

When Geoffrey Hinton, often called the “Godfather of AI,” speaks, the world listens. In his recent interview with the Financial Times, one line stood out like a lightning bolt:

“AI will make most people poorer.”

For a man who laid the very foundations of deep learning, this is not just a prediction it’s a warning.

A Story That Echoed in My Mind

I imagined a classroom of bright medical students. On one side, AI is revolutionising diagnostics, promising personalised medicine, and giving us tools like Delphi-2M (recently in the UK news) that predict disease risks for thousands of conditions. On the other side, Geoffrey Hinton’s words remind us that the same technology could widen inequalities, disrupt jobs, and make most people poorer. This tension hit me deeply. I couldn’t help but wonder is this the ultimate ethical dilemma of our time?

Two Calls That We Cannot Miss

1. The Call for Equity: If AI is shaping the future of healthcare, education, and even survival, how do we ensure it benefits all, not just the privileged few? Will the NHS, already under strain, be able to harness AI for patient empowerment or will it widen health gaps?
2. The Call for Responsibility: For us as medical educators, the responsibility is immense. We are preparing a generation of doctors and healthcare leaders who will not just use AI but live with its ethical consequences.

Questions That Keep Me Awake

• If AI does make most people poorer, how do we safeguard the dignity of healthcare, where every life must be treated equally?
• How do we teach our future clinicians to question, critique, and ethically integrate AI not just accept it as a neutral tool?
• Will AI literacy become as essential as anatomy or pharmacology in the medical curriculum?

My own work in AI, mixed reality, and digital health in medical education is driven by one conviction: technology should be a bridge, not a barrier. I want to see AI empower our students and patients, not disempower them. But Hinton’s words are a sobering reminder that without foresight, policy, and ethical guardrails, AI could create more divides than it heals.