Gates on AI -- and "human reserve"
“Some jobs should stay off limits to AI, not because a robot couldn’t do them, but because something would be lost if it did.”
Bill Gates on AI… Some jobs should stay off limits to AI, not because a robot couldn’t do them, but because something would be lost if it did. Bill Gates argues the AI transition will hit faster than the shift from farms to offices, wiping out entry level jobs across law, customer service, and manufacturing within a decade rather than generations, while automated attacks on hospitals and power grids grow easier to launch than to defend against. His fix isn’t to slow AI down, since he doubts anyone credibly can, but to tax robots and AI tokens the way we tax human payrolls, and to carve out a category he calls “Human Reserved,” roles like elder care and delivering a terminal diagnosis that we choose to keep human even when a machine could do them. The real risk isn’t that AI fails to deliver benefits, it’s that those benefits accrue to a wealthy few while everyone else absorbs the disruption.