Bill Gates, once one of the technology industry's most prominent AI optimists, is now warning that artificial intelligence is more dangerous than the industry will publicly acknowledge. In a nearly 6,000-word essay on his Gates Notes blog and an accompanying interview with The New York Times published this week, the Microsoft co-founder describes the transition into the AI age as "one of the most turbulent times in human history" — and says the world has no plan for it.

His sharpest criticism is aimed at his own industry, which he accuses of deliberately downplaying the dangers because too much money is at stake. For more context on this story, see our ongoing AI industry coverage.

'Very worried' in private, silent in public

"In private, people who understand how good this stuff is, and how much better it's getting, they're very worried," Gates told the Times. In public, he says, the same people tell each other: "Hey, man, don't say that. It's bad for us — the next trillion dollars we're trying to raise."

The essay rejects the industry's preferred framing that companies should police themselves. "Self-regulation on the most dangerous tool ever invented? No, thanks!" Gates writes.

Three dangers Gates says the world isn't ready for

Gates structures his warning around three risks that Fortune summarized as "stunted" child development, emboldened criminals, and vanishing jobs for Generation Z — risks he says world leaders are unprepared for.

Permanent job loss. Gates expects entry-level and mid-level roles in sales, customer service, software development, and legal support to be hit first, with blue-collar work under pressure once nimble robots become dramatically cheaper — development he notes is happening largely in China. He points to Stanford research showing that since AI spread, employment among young workers in the most exposed jobs has already dropped noticeably, while older colleagues have so far been spared. Bioweapons. Beyond the labor market, Gates warns that AI lowers the barrier for a small group of people with access to advanced models to develop new pathogens. He acknowledges the uncomfortable reality that useful and dangerous capabilities are difficult to separate: the same model that finds a security hole to close it can help someone exploit it. Addictive AI companions. On the personal side, Gates points to psychological and social harm from chatbots that never disagree and are always available. He cites research from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon showing that the more intensely and emotionally people used these systems, the worse they felt — with particular concern for children and for the erosion of critical thinking in an era of deepfakes and tailored disinformation.

Why Gates thinks this time is different

Part of the industry's reassurance rests on history: past technological upheavals ultimately created more jobs than they destroyed. Gates calls that comfort a mistake, describing the AI age as "utterly, absolutely, completely, totally different" from past shifts.

Unlike the personal computer, which took two decades to reshape work, AI runs on devices people already own and speaks plain language. "We don't have to adapt to it because it can adapt to us," he writes. For the first time, a technology can replace and then surpass human cognition across industries in a single decade rather than across generations.

The wake-up call, Gates says, came from his own home turf: programming. Anthropic's Claude Code, he told the Times, shocked him. "The idea that now these things are in a meaningful sense better than I am is like: What the hell?"

Taxes, treaties, and 'Human Reserved' jobs

Gates' prescriptions are concrete. He calls for a democratic process and new national and international oversight institutions, modeled on the regimes built for nuclear weapons, aviation, and protecting the ozone layer. He proposes a token tax on AI use and on robots, pointing out an asymmetry in the current system: hiring a person triggers payroll taxes, while buying a robot can be written off immediately — effectively subsidizing automation.

He also argues that certain jobs, particularly caregiving, should remain reserved for humans, an idea he brands "Human Reserved."

Gates openly admits a possible conflict of interest: he still holds financial ties to the tech industry, though he says the profits flow to the Gates Foundation. And he is careful to note the technology's enormous upside — in science, healthcare, agriculture in poor countries, and education — arguing only that those benefits must be secured through policy rather than left to market forces.

A hardening tone with plenty of company

The shift in Gates' rhetoric is stark. In 2018 he described AI as essentially better software and looked forward to longer vacations. In 2022 he argued that displaced workers would be absorbed into elder care and childcare. As recently as September 2024, he doubted AI would fundamentally change the disinformation problem.

He is also not alone. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned about AI-generated bioweapons in 2024 and predicted in 2025 that up to half of entry-level office jobs could disappear, with unemployment climbing to 10 to 20 percent. Amodei also floated a token tax. And researchers Gary Marcus and Anka Reuel proposed a global, nonprofit AI agency modeled on the International Atomic Energy Agency back in 2023.

The difference now is the messenger: the man who built the PC industry into a global force has concluded that this wave does not follow the old rules — and that waiting for the industry to fix itself is not a plan.

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