Bill Gates: The World Is Not Ready for the AI Era
Bill Gates has published a long essay, A Turbulent AI Era and Critical Choices to Make, arguing that no one has a plan for the AI era and calling for intervention before it’s too late. He highlights three major risks: jobs (AI replaces thinking, not just physical labor, so sales, support, development, and legal work go first; robots will compete in construction and hospitality by the end of the decade), security (low-skill criminals can now attack targets from individuals to states, while frontier AI models may act against human interests), and youth impact (AI companions that never disagree risk stunting social skills and weakening critical thinking).
Gates proposes building new institutions that see the full impact of AI, reserving some professions for humans, and creating an AI tax on tokens and robots to correct the tax bias toward replacing people. He argues the decisions must be made collectively—by politicians, educators, doctors, officials, and religious leaders—rather than left to AI companies.
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