In a series of recent interviews, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates made a bold prediction: within the next 10 years, AI will render humans largely obsolete in the workplace.
Gates believes that as AI rapidly advances, it will take over “most things” currently done by people, including key roles in medicine and education.
“With AI, over the next decade, that will become free, commonplace — great medical advice, great tutoring,” Gates said during an appearance on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon.
While he acknowledged that human expertise in fields like healthcare and teaching remains “rare” today, Gates envisions a near future where AI will democratize access to top-tier knowledge and skills.
Gates also elaborated on this vision of “free intelligence” in a conversation last month with Arthur Brooks, a Harvard professor and happiness expert.
He described an era where AI permeates daily life, transforming healthcare, education, and beyond. “It’s very profound and even a little bit scary — because it’s happening very quickly, and there is no upper bound,” Gates said.
The billionaire’s comments have reignited the undulating debate over AI’s impact on the workforce.
Some experts believe AI will primarily augment human labor, boosting efficiency and economic growth. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman similarly said that AI would be like calculators to education.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang similarly declared, “While some worry that AI may take their jobs, someone who is expert with AI will.”
But others, like Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, warn of disruption.
In his 2023 book “The Coming Wave,” Suleyman wrote that AI tools “will only temporarily augment human intelligence” before ultimately replacing many jobs.
“They will make us smarter and more efficient for a time, and will unlock enormous amounts of economic growth, but they are fundamentally labor replacing,” he argued.
Despite the much-discussed downsides of AI, Gates remains confident in AI’s societal benefits, from medical breakthroughs to climate solutions to universal access to quality education.
He also said, if he were to launch a new venture today, it would be “AI-centric.”
“Today, somebody could raise billions of dollars for a new AI company [that’s just] a few sketch ideas,” which is true, given that many generative AI startups have achieved unicorn status without a public product.
As for which human endeavors might prove irreplaceable in a robot-dominated future, Gates offered a few predictions to Fallon. “There will be some things we reserve for ourselves,” he said, suggesting that humans would still prefer to watch other humans play sports, for instance.
“But in terms of making things and moving things and growing food, over time those will be basically solved problems.”
Gates’ vision of a world where human expertise is largely obsolete within a decade may seem jarring – even dystopian – to some.
However, for many in the tech industry, it’s simply the inevitable endpoint of a revolution decades in the making.
