{"id":434337,"date":"2026-02-19T14:59:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/434337\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T14:59:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:59:12","slug":"ai-pocalypse-artificial-intelligence-will-create-a-small-elite-class-living-in-luxury-while-the-majority-will-suffer-ex-google-boss-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/434337\/","title":{"rendered":"AI-pocalypse! Artificial intelligence will create a small elite class living in luxury – while the majority will suffer, ex-Google boss warns"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world is teetering on the edge of an Artificial Intelligence (AI<\/a>) disaster in which a tiny elite class live in luxury while the majority suffer.<\/p>\n

That’s according to Dex Hunter\u2013Torricke, a former communications chief at Google<\/a>‘s AI arm DeepMind, who has worked for Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> and Elon Musk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr Hunter\u2013Torricke, who is a non\u2013executive board member of HM Treasury, wrote in an essay <\/a>that Big Tech’s leaders are driving society towards a radical and disastrous transformation.<\/p>\n

He writes: ‘By mid\u2013century, on this trajectory, we arrive at something that goes beyond inequality and begins to look like economic speciation.<\/p>\n

‘An elite class with AI\u2013augmented capabilities enabling lives of luxury, equipped with medical breakthroughs that deliver longer lifespans, living in parallel with a global majority whose economic prospects, healthcare access, and political power have been permanently curtailed.<\/p>\n

‘This is not a prediction I make lightly. We can see the forces already clearly in motion.’<\/p>\n

The main thrust of Mr Hunter\u2013Torricke’s dire prediction is the idea that rapid advances in AI will lead to the majority of jobs being displaced by automation,<\/p>\n

Dramatically, he claims the International Monetary Fund’s estimates that 60 per cent of jobs are vulnerable to replacement ‘low\u2013ball the true impacts’.<\/p>\n

\"This <\/p>\n

Dex Hunter\u2013Torricke (pictured), former communications chief for Google DeepMind, says AI risks a crisis that would create a small wealthy elite who live in luxury while the rest of the world suffers<\/p>\n

\"Mr <\/p>\n

Mr Hunter\u2013Torricke, who is a non\u2013executive board member of HM Treasury, wrote in an essay that Big Tech’s leaders are driving society towards a radical and disastrous transformation<\/p>\n

Mr Hunter\u2013Torricke’s predictions come from having spent over 15 years working with Silicon Valley’s leaders in the AI revolution.<\/p>\n

The former PR boss has worked with Google’s Eric Schmidt, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and SpaceX’s Elon Musk.<\/p>\n

He says that he has spent ‘nearly two decades with people who are supposed to be making the plan for the future’.<\/p>\n

However, after dramatically leaving his job with Google’s AI arm, Mr Hunter\u2013Torricke claims: ‘It’s crystal clear to me now: there is no plan.’<\/p>\n

At the heart of this argument is the idea that AI is developing far faster than anyone is prepared for.<\/p>\n

While critics have consistently argued that AI’s capabilities are ‘flattening’, successive generations of new models appear to show rapid advances.<\/p>\n

Critically, Mr Hunter\u2013Torricke also claims that these developments are trending towards a more general form of intelligence, one that can be applied to almost any task or activity.<\/p>\n

While the Industrial Revolution replaced manual labour with machines, it opened up new avenues for work in jobs that require thinking and decision\u2013making.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Mr Hunter\u2013Torricke previously worked for Elon Musk (pictured), and warns that tech bosses like Musk are ‘profoundly incurious about the full consequences of what they are building’<\/p>\n

However, since a more general form of AI can do anything, some experts warn that it won’t leave any gaps in the job market at all.<\/p>\n

While the economic benefits will likely be vast, Mr Hunter\u2013Torricke is more concerned about how those gains will be distributed.<\/p>\n

He writes: ‘The productivity gains will be real \u2013 but there is no automatic mechanism that translates them into broadly shared prosperity.<\/p>\n

‘The most likely outcome is an economy in which corporate profits explode as labor costs fall, while workers’ share of output shrinks. Wealth concentrates at an unprecedented rate at the top, while the vast middle loses ground.’<\/p>\n

Based on the current fractured state of global and domestic politics, the former Google chief adds that these changes will likely lead to mass political upheaval.<\/p>\n

‘The demagogues of today will look restrained compared to what fills that space,’ he ominously concludes.<\/p>\n

Mr Hunter\u2013Torricke is not alone in his scepticism over the societal benefits of AI.<\/p>\n

Recently, the head of safeguarding at leading AI company Anthropic quit his position, writing on X: ‘The world is in peril.’<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

This comes after Dario Amodei, founder of leading AI firm Anthropic, warned that humanity was not ready to handle the consequences of the AI his firm seeks to create\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even Anthropic’s founder, Dario Amodei, recently warned that the world isn’t yet ready to face the consequences of AI.<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr Amodei wrote in an essay<\/a>: ‘Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it.<\/p>\n

Separately, leading AI researcher Professor Michael Wooldridge warned that the technology could face a ‘Hindenburg moment’.<\/p>\n

He told The Guardian<\/a>: ‘The Hindenburg disaster destroyed global interest in airships; it was a dead technology from that point on, and a similar moment is a real risk for AI.<\/p>\n

‘Because AI is embedded in so many systems, a major incident could strike almost any sector.’<\/p>\n

Mr Hunter\u2013Torricke now predicts that the world’s governments and institutions have ‘roughly ten years left to rethink many of the fundamental assumptions’.<\/p>\n

He has founded a new London\u2013based non\u2013profit, the Center for Tomorrow, which will address the issue.<\/p>\n

The firm has pledged not to accept any funding from Big Tech and instead has funding from the Scottish billionaire Sir Tom Hunter, who is the uncle of Mr\u2013Torricke’s wife.<\/p>\n

The 44 professions at risk of being replaced by AI <\/p>\n

AI win rate against human professionals:<\/p>\n

Counter and rental clerks: 81%Sales managers: 79%Shipping, receiving, and inventory clerks: 76%Editors: 75%Software developers: 70%Private detectives and investigators: 70%Compliance officers: 69%First\u2013line supervisors of non\u2013retail sales workers: 69%Sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing, except technical and scientific products: 68%General operations managers: 67%Medical and health services managers: 65%Buyers and purchasing agents: 64%Personal financial advisers: 64%Administrative services managers: 62%Customer service representatives: 59%First\u2013line supervisors of retail sales workers: 59%First\u2013line supervisors of production and operating workers: 58%Nurse practitioners: 56%Real estate brokers: 54%News analysts, reporters, and journalists: 53%Computer and information systems managers: 52%First\u2013line supervisors of police and detectives: 49%Sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing, technical and scientific products: 47%Lawyers: 46%Project management specialists: 42%Child, family, and school social workers: 42%Medical secretaries and administrative assistants: 42%Securities, commodities, and financial services sales agents: 42%First\u2013line supervisors of office and administrative support workers: 41%Financial investment analysts: 41%Recreation workers: 37%Registered nurses: 37%Property, real estate, and community association managers: 34%Financial managers: 32%Producers and directors: 31%Audio and video technicians: 30%Concierges: 29%Order clerks: 28%Real estate sales agents: 27%Pharmacists: 26%Accountants and auditors: 24%Mechanical engineers: 23%Industrial engineers: 17%Film and video editors: 17%<\/p>\n

Source: Open AI, GPDval 2025\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world is teetering on the edge of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) disaster in which a tiny elite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,97,995,844,7203,1324,124,412,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-434337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-dailymail","tag-elon-musk","tag-google","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-meta","tag-sciencetech","tag-spacex","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}