He said while he felt AI would increase productivity and wealth, the money would go to the rich “and not the people whose jobs get lost and that’s going to be very bad for society”.

Professor Hinton is the pioneer of neural networks, which form the theoretical basis of the current explosion in artificial intelligence.

He worked at Google until last year, but he left the tech giant to speak more freely about the dangers of unregulated AI.

The concept of a universal basic income amounts to the government paying everyone a set salary regardless of their means.

Critics say it would be highly costly and divert funding away from public services while not necessarily helping to alleviate poverty.