‘The Idea That You Need to Reserve Things for Humans May Sound Bizarre, But We Will Get There’: Bill Gates Says Al Is Bigger Than Internet

If a machine can do your job faster and cheaper, should your boss be free to swap you out? Or will society eventually draw a line and say some work stays human?

Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates thinks that moment is coming, even if protecting jobs from automation sounds strange right now.

Artificial intelligence (AI) "changes the world more than all previous technologies," Gates said on CNN's “State of the Union” on Oct. 11. The personal computer and the internet were "a big deal, but nothing compared to this," he said.

The technology is moving fast, and Gates said that speed gives companies a strong reason to replace people. That leaves governments scrambling to figure out how to respond as the tools get more capable.

"Until people get their mind around how powerful this is, and therefore what it's going to be doing to these jobs, the idea that you need to reserve things for humans may sound bizarre. But, in fact, we will get there," he said.

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Gates Wants Society to Pick the Jobs Humans Keep

Gates said governments will eventually have to decide which jobs stay exclusively human and how to tax AI and robotic labor.

"We really do need to make a decision as a society, how do we tax AI usage or robot usage? And where do we want to make sure the human jobs are preserved?" he asked.

What a machine can do is only part of the problem. When it does the work faster and cheaper, businesses have an obvious financial reason to use it. Workers end up racing a technology that keeps getting better, and the new jobs it creates may not make up for the ones it erases.

Gates has floated an idea he calls "Human Reserved," a category of work society would deliberately shield from full automation.

He compared it to nature reserves in an August essay on his Gates Notes blog. Society could develop all of that land, but it chooses to protect certain areas because losing them would cost too much. The same logic, he argued, could cover jobs that carry economic or social value beyond the profit they generate.

Healthcare and Caregiving Might Stay in Human Hands

Healthcare was one of his examples. Picture a robot telling a patient the disease is incurable. Gates wrote that "there's no technical reason why" a robot couldn't do it. "Yet it shouldn't."

He also pointed to the caregivers who looked after his father during his battle with Alzheimer's disease, saying there was something "irreplaceably human" about their care.

Education, healthcare, and mental health care could be among the fields where people keep central roles, even as AI helps professionals work more efficiently. Gates has suggested some workers could use the technology as a tool instead of being replaced by it.

Plenty of questions remain, including who decides which jobs qualify, how the protections would work, and whether companies would find ways around them.

A Robot Tax Could Flip the Math on Hiring

Gates has also called for taxing artificial intelligence usage or robotic labor.

Employers pay payroll taxes when they hire people, while spending on machines can get different tax treatment. Gates argues that gap can nudge companies toward replacing workers with technology. A tax on AI or robots could narrow it and raise money for worker retraining and other support for people displaced by automation.

The tricky part is pulling that off without discouraging useful innovation or leaving businesses at a disadvantage against competitors in countries with different rules.

Which brings things back to that opening question. If machines can handle more and more jobs, society will have to decide whether every task is fair game for automation or whether some human work deserves protection.

Reserving jobs for people may sound unusual now, but Gates expects it to become part of the debate as the economic effects of AI get harder to ignore.

On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.