Gates warns AI era may be most turbulent ever

Bill Gates says tech leaders privately fear AI but downplay it for profit, urging urgent global.

In a nearly 6,000-word essay published on his personal website, Bill Gates warns that AI is forging the "most turbulent time in human history," predicting massive unemployment and economic turmoil if leaders fail to act. Gates, 70, writes that "AI for the first time can replace and exceed human cognition" and will soon be "substantially better than humans at many tasks." He says the rapid pace of change means the transition will be disruptive even under the best circumstances, and that "there is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era." Gates calls addressing these risks "the world's top priority."

According to ABC News, Gates told The New York Times that tech executives are knowingly downplaying AI threats, putting profits over precautions. "In private, people who understand how good this stuff is, and how much better it's getting, they're very worried," Gates said, adding that few executives would publicly admit it. The News International reports that Gates said, "I don't like bringing bad news to people, and I don't like saying that innovation may be a net negative. But that's where we are." This marks a striking reversal for a figure who helped pioneer the personal computer revolution.

Gates proposes several measures to slow AI's impact, including a tax on AI tokens and a tax on robots that replace human workers. He argues that employers currently pay taxes on human earnings but can write off robots as business expenses, and that such taxes would "slow the rush away from human labor" while funding retraining. He also suggests preserving a "human reserved domain" for roles like caregivers and mental health workers. However, University of Washington computer science professor Oren Etzioni told ABC News he agrees with the diagnosis but not the full prescription. Etzioni said taxing tokens "measures effort, not displacement of workers" and warned that taxing American tokens could push AI use offshore to Chinese models.

Gates writes that "if someone had a credible plan for slowing down AI advances globally, I would likely support it," but acknowledges that geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing full speed ahead. He says the AI era differs fundamentally from the PC revolution, which took 20 years to significantly change work. Etzioni told ABC News that it is not too late to act, but urged urgency and pragmatism, saying it may be too late three years from now. He suggested existing U.S. agencies should enact the right policies rather than creating new government agencies. The debate now centers on whether coordinated global action is possible before AI's disruptive effects accelerate further.