Bill Gates Calls for Human-Reserved Jobs and a Robot Tax in His First AI Essay in Three Years

In a nearly 6,000-word essay, Bill Gates warns the world has no plan for the upheaval AI is about to bring, and proposes reserving some jobs for humans and taxing robots to fund the transition.

Bill Gates published his first lengthy essay on artificial intelligence in three years this week — a nearly 6,000-word warning that the world is dangerously unprepared for the upheaval the technology is about to unleash, paired with a handful of concrete proposals to soften the blow.

The most striking idea is what he calls the "human-reserved" domain. Gates argues society should set aside certain jobs — caregiving and delivering life-changing medical news among them — for people only, likening the idea to nature reserves where we choose not to build even though we could. He grounds the concept in memory: his father died of Alzheimer's in 2020, attended by paid caregivers who understood him even when he struggled to express himself. "Something in the care they gave my dad was irreplaceably human," he wrote. "No robot could or should have done it."

Gates also revived his long-standing call for a tax on AI tokens and robots, arguing the current system nudges employers toward machines — buy a robot and it can be written off immediately, while hiring a person means payroll taxes. "I proposed a robot tax years ago and most of the reaction was that it was a strange idea. I'm still a big proponent of it." He warned there is "no plan" for the transition and that "we do not have the luxury of moving slowly," arguing AI will demand a response far larger than the U.S. government's post-9/11 security reorganization.

"Many jobs will disappear forever," Gates wrote, singling out entry- and mid-level roles in sales, customer support, software engineering and paralegal work as first in line, and predicting "smart" robots will compete for physical labor in construction and hospitality by the end of the decade. He said he would support a credible global slowdown plan — but does not expect one to materialize, because "geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing too hard to go full speed ahead."

Sources: The Guardian | Gizmodo