Yoshua Bengio, a pioneering AI researcher often called one of the “godfathers of AI,” has issued a stark warning that it is only a matter of time before artificial intelligence eliminates every single job, extending even to safer trade roles like plumbing that many young workers are turning to for stability. In recent comments, Bengio highlighted how AI’s rapid evolution is accelerating beyond previous expectations, outpacing earlier predictions about job displacement timelines. His update, from a scientist who helped create foundational AI technologies, signals a sharper sense of urgency than in his past public statements on the future of work.
Background on Yoshua Bengio’s Role in AI
Yoshua Bengio built his reputation as a central architect of modern artificial intelligence through his research on deep learning, the family of techniques that underpins today’s most powerful AI systems. At the University of Montreal and the Mila institute, he helped refine neural network architectures that can learn complex patterns from vast datasets, work that laid the groundwork for large language models, image recognition systems, and advanced decision-making algorithms now spreading across industries. Those technical breakthroughs gave companies the tools to automate tasks that once required human judgment, which is why Bengio’s warnings about job loss carry direct relevance for workers and employers.
Alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun, Bengio is widely recognized as one of the three “godfathers of AI” for breakthroughs in neural networks during the 2010s that transformed AI from a niche academic field into a general-purpose technology. He has also served in academic and advisory roles on global AI ethics panels, where he has argued that societies must anticipate the social and economic consequences of increasingly capable systems. That combination of scientific leadership and policy engagement gives him unusual authority when he forecasts how quickly AI might reshape labor markets and what that could mean for job security across sectors.
Bengio’s Latest Predictions on Job Displacement
In his latest comments, Bengio is quoted as saying it is only “a matter of time” before AI wipes out every single job, a formulation that underscores his view of the process as inevitable rather than speculative. He links that inevitability to the accelerating capabilities of current models, which are learning to handle a widening range of tasks with less human supervision and more generalization across domains. According to reporting that describes him as “the scientist who helped create AI,” Bengio now frames total job automation as a realistic outcome of the technology he helped design, a shift that raises the stakes for workers who once assumed their roles were insulated from software-driven disruption.
This recent outlook marks a clear change from Bengio’s earlier 2023 warnings, when he focused more heavily on risks to white-collar and knowledge-based roles such as legal research, software development, and financial analysis. In light of 2025 AI advancements, he has expanded his concern to all sectors, arguing that the same underlying systems can be paired with sensors, planning algorithms, and physical machines to take over tasks in logistics, manufacturing, and services. As he explains it in coverage that highlights his statement that it is only “a matter of time” before every job is wiped out, the key development is that AI’s ability to generalize across tasks has improved faster than anticipated, turning what once sounded like a distant hypothetical into a near-term planning problem for governments and businesses.
Why Trade Jobs Like Plumbing Are Vulnerable
Bengio now explicitly includes “safer” manual trades like plumbing in the list of roles he expects AI to eventually eliminate, arguing that the combination of advanced software and robotics will be able to handle precise, on-site diagnostics and repairs. He points to the way AI systems can already interpret complex visual and sensor data, reason about likely faults, and propose step-by-step fixes, capabilities that can be embedded in mobile robots or augmented tools. In his view, once those systems are integrated into hardware that can navigate homes and commercial buildings, the same automation wave that has transformed call centers and back offices will reach pipes, valves, and fixtures, leaving fewer tasks that require a human plumber on site.
That warning is particularly pointed for younger workers, because Bengio notes that many Gen Z workers are pursuing trades like plumbing for job security, a strategy he now believes will soon fail under AI’s broad reach. He also highlights how AI tools already assist in trade planning, from software that designs optimal piping layouts in new construction to diagnostic apps that guide technicians through troubleshooting sequences. For Bengio, those tools are early indicators of a trajectory toward full automation, in which the same systems that support human tradespeople today evolve into end-to-end solutions that can schedule, execute, and verify repairs without human labor, reshaping career planning for an entire generation.
Stakeholder Impacts and Calls for Action
Bengio’s forecast of total job loss has immediate implications for workers, who may need to prepare for repeated reskilling as AI displaces not just office jobs but also blue-collar ones. He argues that if it is truly only a matter of time before every single job is wiped out, then traditional advice about “moving up the value chain” or “choosing non-automatable careers” will no longer hold. Instead, he sees a future in which human labor is structurally less central to production, a shift that could widen inequality unless societies redesign education, social safety nets, and income support to match the new reality.
To mitigate that fallout, Bengio has called for policy interventions such as universal basic income, presenting it as a way to decouple basic living standards from the availability of paid work in an economy dominated by AI. He also urges business leaders to treat his updated timeline as a signal to adopt AI ethically, not only by complying with regulations but by planning for workforce transitions and sharing productivity gains. Reporting that quotes him as saying it is only a matter of time before every single job is wiped out notes that his stance heightens pressure on companies to move beyond short-term cost cutting and consider how their deployment of AI will affect social stability, consumer demand, and public trust in the technology itself.
