If you've been looking at the tech world for any longer than a few seconds, you've surely seen the seemingly sudden insistence that AI be inserted into every aspect of technology going forward.
AI has become both an overzealous marketing term and a reality that "artificial intelligence" is everywhere now and many are concerned that AI is going to be pushed to take people's jobs.
They may be right, according to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Recently, interviews from Gates have come back to the fore as the billionaire made several predictions about how work might look in the future.
A month ago, Gates went on the The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and said that AI would replace humans for most things.
"There will be some things we reserve for ourselves. But in terms of making things and moving things and growing food, over time those will be basically solved problems," Gates told Fallon.
Is it dead or thriving?
Iterating on that concept, Gates has indicated that at least three jobs will need human hands over AI.
Despite reports and claims from a certain class of technologist (it's CEOs) that coding was going to become the domain of AI, Gates apparently believes that humans are essential to coding. In a different interview, he said that coders would need to understand the underlying layers of AI to determine whether it was working properly or acting "crazy stupid."
"It's kind of like saying, should you learn to multiply, just because computers are really good at it," Gates told Axios.
Gates added that he believes that human coders are essential to identifying and correcting errors, refining algorithms, and helping improve AI development.
The other two
Apparently, Bill Gates argues that while we could use AI to diagnose diseases and analyze DNA, it's "biologists" that will still be necessary for biological research and scientific discovery.
It's not clear why he singles out biologists specifically when it seems that entire line of thinking could be extrapolated to all scientific endeavors that require creativity in research and discovery.
Lastly, apparently, energy experts are third field exempt from an AI takeover because the billionaire has claimed the field is too complex to be fully automated.
As for the rest of us?
"Should we, you know, just work like 2 or 3 days a week?" Gates asked Fallon while saying that things like expert medical advice or educational resources will be cheap and available thanks to AI.
What we'll be doing during those "two or three days a week" is up for debate, but there is a sector of Silicon Valley that basically worships AI, and has been since at least 2017, so maybe we'll ended up as acolytes in the church of Godbot.
More from Tom's Guide
- Google unveils Gemini 2.5 — claims AI breakthrough with enhanced reasoning and multimodal power
- OpenAI just unveiled enhanced image generator within ChatGPT-4o — here's what you can do now
- I use ChatGPT every day — here's 9 prompts I can't live without
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
