Bill Gates says many jobs will disappear forever, and proposes reserving some work for humans and taxing AI tokens and robots

Bill Gates published an essay on 26 August 2026 arguing that the world has no plan for the arrival of AI and needs one before unemployment rises sharply. He expects AI to take on work in law, customer service, medicine, software and manufacturing "over the course of a decade rather than a few generations", and under the heading "Many jobs will disappear forever" he says the jobs most at risk are entry- and mid-level ones. Sales and customer support, software engineering and paralegal work may be among the first affected, he writes, followed by tasks such as assessing loan applications and triaging patients, with robots competing for some construction and hospitality work by the end of the decade. He makes three proposals. The first is new national and international institutions to manage the transition. The second he calls Human Reserved: work deliberately set aside for people, in the way land is set aside as a nature reserve, with the caregivers who looked after his father as his example. The third is a tax on AI tokens and robots. An employer pays payroll taxes on a hire but can usually write off a robot straight away, he notes: "The tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines." Gates discloses that he still has financial ties to the technology industry and works with Microsoft and other AI companies through the Gates Foundation. He repeated the warning on The Ezra Klein Show on 29 September, where the show's notes quote him calling the idea that the AI industry can regulate itself "insane". This is a forecast from an investor and philanthropist, not an employer reporting cuts, and nothing in it adds to the verified count on this site.