Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and chairman of the Gates Foundation, said an AI transition to an era of abundance could take about 20 years and warned it would be turbulent, with disruption falling unevenly across workers.
In an Oct. 22 interview with The Verge's Decoder podcast, Gates called 20 years “a reasonably safe number,” while allowing that the transition could take less or more time. He said it would produce “winners and losers” and bring substantial disruption.
His Aug. 26 essay, “The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical,” places the effects on work across roughly the next decade. Gates expects AI to reach jobs in legal services and customer support as well as health care, software and manufacturing.
New work may appear, he says, yet total employment could still contract substantially if policy does not adapt. He identifies people in entry- and mid-level roles and young people entering the labor market as especially exposed. Gates also warns that AI's benefits could concentrate among a small group without intervention, even as he points to possible gains in health, education and agriculture.
Gates attributes rapid AI development to competition among companies and to geopolitical and economic pressures. His essay compares the technology's pace with the U.S. shift from farm work to office jobs, a change that unfolded over generations. He argues that AI can substitute for some human cognition and may spread through work faster.
In the interview, Gates called for academia, think tanks and policymakers to engage with AI's effects. He said the Gates Foundation is applying AI in health, education and agriculture, including support for African languages and improved forecasts for farmers in Africa. The foundation was holding strategy reviews in October to set spending for tuberculosis, HIV and malaria next year.
