Bill Gates is sounding the alarm about artificial intelligence, warning in a new essay that the technology will rapidly transform the U.S. labor market and put millions of jobs at risk.<\/p>\n
AI is changing the economy much faster than previous technological revolutions, advancing at what the Microsoft co-founder called a “mind-blowing rate” and leaving less time to prepare for employment disruptions.<\/p>\n
“AI will take on work in law, customer service, medicine, software, and manufacturing. It will hit these industries rapidly, over the course of a decade rather than a few generations,” Gates wrote in an article<\/a> posted on his personal website published on Wednesday. “There will be some new jobs, but without the right policies, there will be far fewer than exist today.”<\/p>\n While Gates outlines what he describes as a number of risks posed by AI in his nearly 6,000-word essay, he focuses particularly on how the technology could affect American workers. As AI’s reasoning skills improve, it’s becoming a more direct competitor to human cognitive abilities, he said.<\/p>\n “The biggest shift for workers will happen when AI provides nearly error-free work,” he wrote. “At that point, it will be able to function on its own without a human checking in on it, and companies will have every economic incentive to let it.”<\/p>\n