Bill Gates has warned that the world needs to do more to prepare for a “turbulent AI era” before workers are “displaced or underemployed.”
In a nearly 5,900-word essay published on Wednesday, the Microsoft cofounder said that AI and robotics will eventually reach beyond the white-collar jobs already under pressure from the technology.
“We have to think now about how to reduce job losses so that everyone can share in the prosperity that AI creates,” Gates wrote.
He said policymakers should consider protecting certain jobs for humans and taxing automation to help fund retraining and a stronger safety net.
Here are three takeaways from Gates’ essay warning about AI and jobs.
1. Robots could bring AI disruption to blue-collar jobs
So far, most of the job fallout from AI has centered on white-collar work, which Gates said is already being hit “modestly.” However, blue-collar workers will eventually be affected too, as robots become cheaper and more capable, the billionaire said.
“Many Americans I talk to don’t realize how fast dexterous robots are advancing,” he wrote.
Despite flashy demonstrations, humanoid robots have not yet been widely adopted in factories or service work because of limitations in their underlying AI systems and a lack of dexterity in their hands.
Gates appeared to hint at that gap in his essay, writing that people may be “confused by those videos of robots dancing badly that have been going viral lately.”
Despite this, he said “smart” robots could start competing with people on some physical tasks in construction and hospitality “by the end of the decade.”
2. Some jobs could be set aside for humans
Gates said that, as AI and robots improve, society may decide to set aside some work for people only, an idea he calls “Human Reserved.”
He gave the example of receiving an incurable disease diagnosis from a robot.
“There’s no technical reason why it couldn’t,” he wrote. “Yet it shouldn’t.”
Gates’s thinking was shaped in part by the care his late father received after developing Alzheimer’s disease.
The Microsoft cofounder wrote that paid caregivers understood his father’s needs even when he struggled to express them — care Gates said was “irreplaceably human” and that “no robot could or should have done.”
He said fields such as education and mental healthcare could become a mix of humans and AI, with people remaining in charge.
3. Taxing AI tokens and robots can fund reskilling
Gates also said that governments should tax AI tokens — the units into which AI models divide and process text and other data — and robots to slow the push to replace workers and to raise money for the transition.
He said the current tax system nudges companies toward replacing workers with machines because employers pay payroll taxes when they hire people, while robots can generally be written off as a business expense.
Gates is not alone in arguing that the AI boom needs a new approach to taxation.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for more robust tax policies — potentially targeted at AI companies — to spread the technology’s gains more broadly, while OpenAI has proposed taxes tied to automated labor as part of a wider plan to respond to AI-driven disruption.
“Waiting until people are already displaced or underemployed will be too late,” Gates wrote. “AI is a structural challenge to the way our economy is organized, and it requires thinking and action now.”
