Bill Gates is arguably one of the people who understand technology best. Recently, Gates has been outspoken about his concerns regarding AI. Gates’s warning is not a rejection of AI’s potential, but a reminder for society to face up to the pains of the transition period. AI may bring abundance, and it may also upend employment structures. The key lies in how, after technology is unleashed, to take seriously the arrangements for safeguards, monitoring, and transition, so that this transformation does not come at the cost of the livelihoods of a large number of ordinary people.
In a television interview in late September, he stated that if AI is left unregulated, it could lead to “a billion deaths,” and said that “no one thinks self-regulation is enough.” He urged politicians and even law enforcement agencies to start thinking about “what safeguards and monitoring should look like,” because even installing a “kill switch” would not be enough. Last week, Gates appeared on the “Decoder” podcast. Although the tone of his warning was different, it was still blunt. He is more optimistic about the benefits of AI, believing that it could create “true abundance,” but only on the premise that a difficult road must first be traveled. Gates believes that AI will cause many jobs, such as telephone customer service and accounting, to disappear, because AI can complete these tasks faster, more cheaply, and more efficiently; blue-collar jobs, meanwhile, face the threat of humanoid robots.
Gates is not the first person to issue such warnings. Many people believe that AI will be highly deflationary, solving many of the world’s inefficiencies while taking on many of humanity’s daily chores. However, it is precisely these inefficiencies and chores that provide employment opportunities. If AI can truly do everything, what jobs will be left for humans? And how will people earn money? Perhaps people will no longer have to work so hard and will have more free time, but whether this is actually a good thing, or whether it will leave many people without a sense of purpose, is hard to say definitively. Earlier this year, former AI researcher Jacob Cockxon, who had worked at OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned and posted a warning on social media, stating that he believes the probability of AI wiping out all of humanity exceeds 10%. Although the post was widely shared and taken seriously, critics argued that the 27-year-old had fallen into a narrative more akin to a cult than to reality. But when the subject is Gates, such an argument is harder to sustain, because of his knowledge, his experience, and the time he has lived through periods of technological change. At present, AI agents have already been involved in enough incidents, and well-known figures in the field have issued enough warnings, that all of this should be taken seriously.
