Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has called for significant limits and stronger regulation of artificial intelligence, warning that without urgent safeguards, the technology could cause widespread job losses, deepen inequality and create serious cyber, biological and social risks that may outweigh its potential benefits.
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Gates made the warning on Wednesday in a nearly 6,000-word essay titled “The Turbulent AI Era Is Here. The Choices We Make Now Are Critical,” in which he argued that governments and societies are not adequately preparing for the speed and scale at which artificial intelligence is developing.
“AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice,” Gates wrote.
The billionaire technology pioneer, who became one of the world’s richest people during the personal computer revolution, said the coming AI transformation would be considerably more disruptive than previous technological changes.
“Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history,” he said.
Gates expressed concern that governments, experts and communities had yet to establish a credible framework for managing the transformation.
“I don’t see evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. There is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era,” he said.
While acknowledging the enormous benefits artificial intelligence could bring, particularly in medicine, agriculture and scientific research, Gates said those opportunities must be weighed against potentially severe consequences.
He said AI could accelerate breakthroughs in the prevention and treatment of diseases and improve productivity across several sectors, but warned that increasingly powerful systems could also displace workers, damage the development of children and make it easier for criminals and other malicious actors to cause harm.
Gates raised the possibility that increasingly autonomous AI systems could eventually operate contrary to human interests.
“As the models become more powerful, they could begin to act against our interests and we could lose control,” he warned.
He said he would support a credible global plan to slow the development of advanced AI if such an arrangement were realistically achievable.
“If someone had a credible plan for slowing down AI advances globally, I would likely support it,” Gates said.
He, however, acknowledged that such an agreement appeared unlikely because countries and companies face powerful economic and geopolitical incentives to continue developing the technology rapidly.
“The geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing too hard to go full speed ahead,” he said.
In a separate interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Gates said improvements in the capabilities of AI models had occurred considerably faster than he expected.
“They’re now capable of causing cyberattack risk, bioterrorism risk, psychosocial risk,” Gates said.
He added that he was surprised by the absence of clearly established standards for evaluating increasingly powerful AI systems and deciding what measures should be taken to minimise possible harm.
“I have to say I’m kind of shocked that the exact criteria that we review these models with, and the actions we take to minimize the harms, are really completely missing,” he said.
Gates devoted substantial attention to the threat AI poses to employment, warning that the technology could transform the labour market within years rather than generations.
According to him, professions previously regarded as relatively protected from automation will increasingly face competition from AI.
“AI will take on work in law, customer service, medicine, software, and manufacturing. It will hit these industries rapidly, over the course of a decade rather than a few generations,” he wrote.
Although some new categories of employment are expected to emerge, Gates warned that without appropriate policies there could ultimately be significantly fewer jobs than exist today.
“There will be some new jobs, but without the right policies, there will be far fewer than exist today,” he said.
He argued that the most disruptive stage would arrive when AI becomes capable of producing work with almost no errors and without continuous human supervision.
“The biggest shift for workers will happen when AI provides nearly error-free work,” Gates wrote.
“At that point, it will be able to function on its own without a human checking in on it, and companies will have every economic incentive to let it.”
Gates said the impact was already becoming visible in some white-collar professions, with companies increasingly assigning tasks such as research, analysis and other cognitive work to AI systems rather than employees.
He also expressed particular concern about young people entering the labour market at a time when businesses could increasingly reduce entry-level positions through automation.
But Gates said the disruption would not be limited to office-based jobs.
He predicted that advances in robotics combined with increasingly capable AI systems would eventually threaten some forms of manual employment.
“I think ‘smart’ robots will begin to compete with people on some physical tasks in the construction and hospitality industries, for example by the end of the decade,” he wrote.
To slow the displacement of workers and ensure that governments continue to receive revenue as employment patterns change, Gates proposed restructuring tax systems so that companies do not receive a financial advantage simply by replacing humans with machines.
One option, according to him, would be to impose taxes on AI tokens or robots, similar in principle to payroll taxes imposed when companies employ human workers.
“Right now, if you’re an employer and you hire someone, you pay payroll taxes on their earnings,” Gates said.
“But if you buy a robot, you can usually write it off right away as a business expense. The tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines.”
He argued that taxing automation could slow the replacement of workers while generating resources that governments could use to manage the economic and social consequences of AI.
Gates also proposed that societies consider reserving certain categories of work exclusively or primarily for humans, even where machines eventually become technically capable of performing those jobs.
He cited caregiving as an example, saying some societies could decide that elderly people should continue to receive care from humans because of the emotional and social value of human interaction.
“Some countries might insist on having humans take care of the elderly,” he wrote.
He acknowledged, however, that different countries may reach different conclusions depending on their demographic circumstances.
Japan, for instance, could be more receptive to robotic caregivers because of its ageing population and shrinking workforce.
Gates compared the idea of protecting certain occupations from automation to establishing a nature reserve choosing deliberately to preserve something even where economic incentives might otherwise favour development.
The Microsoft co-founder said policymakers, legislators and governments must begin developing such frameworks before large-scale unemployment occurs, rather than waiting until communities have already been damaged.
“My message to leaders is: You have a chance to act now, before unemployment rises sharply, communities are hurting, and public trust has eroded,” Gates said.
“You can make sure AI benefits everyone. And you can work with other governments to meet this national and global challenge.”
Gates stressed that the people most vulnerable to technological displacement are also likely to have the least financial capacity and time to adapt.
“I believe we need time to prepare for the period of social, political and economic upheaval we are about to enter,” he said.
“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.”
Although Gates stopped short of calling for an outright halt to artificial intelligence development, his proposals amount to a call for governments to place meaningful constraints on how quickly AI replaces human labour and how increasingly powerful systems are deployed.
His central argument is that artificial intelligence could dramatically improve health, productivity and living standards, but without taxation, regulation, safety testing and policies protecting workers and vulnerable groups, the same technology could deepen inequality and trigger widespread economic and social disruption.
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