Bill Gates: In the next decade, humans will no longer be needed 'in the vast majority of jobs' due to the development of AI

Billionaire Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, shared his views on AI that human expertise is still scarce today, we still depend on top experts such as "good doctors" or "excellent teachers".

But in the next decade, Gates says, AI will turn this deep knowledge into a free and widely available resource. “Excellent medical advice, high-quality educational guidance, all of that will become easily accessible thanks to AI,” he says.

In another conversation with Harvard Professor Arthur Brooks last month, Gates called this the era of “unbridled intelligence,” an era in which AI will drive dramatic advances in everything from medicine and disease diagnosis to education and virtual assistants.

"This is a profound, even somewhat frightening change, because it happens so quickly and without limits," Gates said.

The question is how humans will adapt to a world shaped by AI. Some experts believe that AI will increase labor productivity and boost economic growth, thereby creating more jobs.

However, Microsoft's AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has a different view. In his book "The Coming Wave" (2023) (roughly translated: The Coming Wave), he warned that AI will not only assist but also gradually replace humans in most jobs, causing major upheavals in the workforce.

“These tools will make us smarter and more productive in the short term, but ultimately they will replace human labor,” Suleyman writes.

AI: Great Challenges and Opportunities

Bill Gates sees AI as not only a technology with great potential but also a "great opportunity" for humanity.

He believes that AI can bring breakthroughs in treating incurable diseases, provide innovative solutions to climate change, and help make high-quality education universal across the globe.

Gates asserted that while AI could transform many fields, some jobs will remain human. “We may not want to see robots playing baseball,” he joked. But in the long run, areas like manufacturing, transportation, and agriculture will increasingly be optimized and solved by AI.

Despite his optimism, Gates also acknowledged the risks of AI. In a 2023 paper, he pointed out that current AI models are still prone to errors and can unintentionally amplify misinformation online. These concerns are “entirely valid and reasonable,” he stressed.

Still, if he were starting a startup from scratch, Gates said he would focus on AI. "Today, with just a few sketches, someone can raise billions of dollars for an AI startup," he told CNBC Make It in September 2024.

He also encouraged young talent at Microsoft, OpenAI, and elsewhere to take advantage of the opportunity: “Hey, this is the new frontier. You have a fresher perspective than I do, and that’s your advantage.”

Bill Gates and visionabout AI

Nearly a decade ago, Bill Gates recognized the enormous potential of AI. When asked if he could start his business over again, he did not hesitate to choose AI as his focus area.

At a 2017 event at Columbia University (USA), Gates and CEO Warren Buffett of the American multinational investment corporation Berkshire Hathaway discussed the impact of AI.

He particularly highlighted the milestone of artificial intelligence company DeepMind, when the lab developed an AI program that could beat humans at the game of Go, an achievement that represents a major step forward for AI technology.

At the time, AI was still far from having powerful language models like ChatGPT. But by 2023, even Gates was surprised by how quickly the technology was advancing.

He challenged OpenAI to create an AI that could achieve the highest score on the AP Biology exam for high school students in the US, a task he predicted would take at least 2 to 3 years. But in just a few months, OpenAI completed the challenge.

Gates described the moment as a turning point in the history of technology, even calling it "the most important advancement since the advent of graphical user interfaces in the 1980s".