Tech Billionaire Gates Warns of AI's Job-Removal Threat and Proposes Tax on AI
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Gates warned that artificial intelligence could permanently eliminate jobs across industries while making cyberattacks and bioterrorism easier. Getty Images
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ZeroHedgeMicrosoft cofounder Bill Gates warned Wednesday that artificial intelligence (AI) will permanently eliminate many white- and blue-collar jobs and called for taxes on AI and robots along with protections reserving certain jobs for humans.
Epoch Times BusinessMicrosoft cofounder Bill Gates warned Wednesday that artificial intelligence (AI) will permanently eliminate many white- and blue-collar jobs and called for taxes on AI and robots along with protections reserving certain jobs for humans.
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AI will affect law, customer service, medicine, software, and manufacturing over roughly a decade, Gates predicted. Entry- and mid-level positions face the greatest immediate danger, while robots will eventually threaten construction, hospitality, and other physical jobs.
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Epoch Times BusinessAI will affect law, customer service, medicine, software, and manufacturing over roughly a decade, Gates predicted. Entry- and mid-level positions face the greatest immediate danger, while robots will eventually threaten construction, hospitality, and other physical jobs.
New York Post BusinessEntry- and mid-level jobs face the most immediate threat, according to Gates. Gates predicted that increasingly capable “smart” robots will begin competing with humans on some physical tasks in construction and hospitality by the end of the decade.
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Gates also proposed taxing AI tokens and robots. Employers pay payroll taxes when they hire workers but can often deduct robots as business expenses, creating an incentive to replace labor, he said. A tax could slow that process and provide revenue for retraining displaced workers and strengthening the social safety net.
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ZeroHedgeGates also proposed taxing AI tokens and robots. Employers pay payroll taxes when they hire workers but can often deduct robots as business expenses, creating an incentive to replace labor, he said. A tax could slow that process and provide revenue for retraining displaced workers and strengthening the social safety net.
FortuneGates resurfaced his suggestion in an essay this week, writing: “Right now, if you’re an employer and you hire someone, you pay payroll taxes on their earnings. But if you buy a robot, you can usually write it off right away as a business expense. The tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines.”
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U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) supported the idea of taxing AI. "Even tech billionaires like Bill Gates are saying we need an AI token tax to prevent mass unemployment," Casar posted on X on Wednesday. "I introduced the first and only bill in Congress to do it." The Cato Institute's Adam Michel pushed back in June on some of Gates's ideas, including taxing the robots that replace jobs done by humans.
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Epoch Times BusinessU.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) supported the idea of taxing AI. The Cato Institute’s Adam Michel pushed back in June on some of Gates’s ideas, including taxing the robots that replace jobs done by humans.
6 details only one outlet reported
Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
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01 ZeroHedge "Many jobs will disappear forever," Gates wrote in an essay published on his Gates Notes website. He said AI could become "the greatest equalizer ever invented" or "the worst source of injustice," and governments are not adequately preparing for the disruption.
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02 Epoch Times Business “Many jobs will disappear forever,” Gates wrote in an essay published on his Gates Notes website. He said AI could become “the greatest equalizer ever invented” or “the worst source of injustice,” and governments are not adequately preparing for the disruption.
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03 CNBC The artificial intelligence spending boom is testing one of Big Tech's greatest strengths: pristine balance sheets. Club holdings Meta Platforms , Amazon , Alphabet and Microsoft entered the AI race as some of the world's healthiest companies and most desirable borrowers, armed with enormous cash on hand and little debt relative to their equity, known as leverage. These hyperscalers' rock-solid balance sheets made their stocks safe havens during periods of economic uncertainty and market volatility, such as the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in 2023. But after years of accelerating investment in data centers and AI servers, those once-enviable financial profiles are beginning to show some strain.
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04 New York Post Business Gates even invoked the Great Depression, when unemployment in the US reached roughly 25% in 1933, while stopping short of predicting AI-driven joblessness would hit that level.
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05 Fortune Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is open to ideas about how to share the massive wealth being generated by the AI boom. He’s created billionaires on his executive team, personally ensures his staff are competitively paid, and is “perfectly fine” with proposals to tax the ultra-wealthy more.
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06 RealClearMarkets Are We On The Cusp Of AI Turbulence? James Pethokoukis, AEIdeas Bill Gates thinks so
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