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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has warned that the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) will bring significant challenges as it reshapes industries and labor markets, suggesting that reserving certain human-only roles could help ease the transition.
In an essay published on his GatesNotes platform, Gates urged for public debate and a comprehensive plan to manage AI’s evolution and its profound impact on the global workforce and society, calling it an urgent priority.
“In terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice. The challenge is monumental. Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history,” Gates wrote.
Gates highlighted critical questions regarding how AI can be deployed without widening the wealth gap, and how to protect workers most vulnerable to job displacement caused by automation.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said AI could be a great equalizer or exacerbate inequities between rich and poor. (Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)
“I believe that answering these questions and acting on the answers should be the world’s top priority. If the world takes the right steps, AI will be a force for good and leave everyone better off,” Gates wrote.
“Unfortunately, right now we are not preparing for it. I don’t see evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting these challenges adequately,” he noted. “There is no comprehensive plan to ease the entry into the AI era.”
Gates argued that many commentators underestimate the scope of AI’s impact, partly due to current reliability issues and misleading analogies to past technological innovations, failing to grasp how truly transformative AI can be.
The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft acknowledged his potential bias toward technology and AI, given his fortune and his ongoing work with the Gates Foundation, which involves AI deployment.
However, he added that his “views on AI are not motivated by the potential to make more money for myself,” emphasizing that investment profits will go to the Gates Foundation to tackle global inequity.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve wished innovation could happen faster. With AI, my feelings are more complicated. I wish the world could get the benefits rapidly and delay the problems it will cause as long as possible, but the benefits and problems are arriving at the same time,” Gates wrote.
“I believe we need time to prepare for the period of social, political, and economic upheaval we are about to enter,” he added. “The people who need the most time are the ones who have the least – the accounting worker who’s replaced by a bot or the $20-an-hour worker who loses their job to a $10-an-hour robot.”
Gates said AI could cause one of the most turbulent periods in human history as it reshapes work and more. (iStock)
Gates noted that AI is likely to impact workers in industries such as law, customer service, medicine, software, and manufacturing within a decade, warning that while some new jobs will emerge, without proper policies, there will be far fewer than exist today.
“If someone had a credible plan for slowing down AI advances globally, I would likely support it. However, I don’t think that’s going to happen. The geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing too hard to go full speed ahead,” he wrote.
Gates explained that as AI and robotics improve, “we’ll set aside certain things for only people to do,” with some roles classified as “Human Reserved” for various reasons.
“We might set something aside as Human Reserved for economic reasons. For example, we may do it because allowing machines to take over a certain role will displace a large number of people who can’t easily change jobs,” he explained.
“Sometimes the decision to make something Human Reserved will be driven by other factors. In healthcare, for example, imagine a robot giving you the awful news that you have an incurable disease. There’s no technical reason why it couldn’t, yet it shouldn’t,” Gates said.
Gates said he could see some jobs set aside for humans over a period of time to ease the adjustment. (Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for Laver Cup)
He added that he believes the Human Reserved domain “will evolve over time,” as AI could be phased in over years or decades in certain fields, or as a persistent mixture of humans and AI in areas like education and healthcare.
“The lines will vary from place to place. Some countries might insist on having humans take care of the elderly. But a country like Japan, which has a shrinking workforce and not enough young people to care for the old, may welcome a caregiving robot,” Gates wrote.
He added that he doesn’t have answers to a host of questions regarding who would determine which roles could be reserved for humans, the criteria used to make those decisions, how to prevent companies from skirting those rules, and how these dynamics would affect international trade.
Gates emphasized that those questions “will need to be worked out in public as part of the transition plan.”
