Bill Gates calls for 'saving' jobs for humans in the AI era
In a 6,000-word essay titled "The turbulent AI era has arrived, the choices we make are decisive" on August 26, the billionaire predicted that many jobs would disappear forever due to the invasion of technology. According to him, as AI and robots become more and more perfect, some jobs need to be reserved for humans.
"I call it a reserve for people. I like the phrase 'conservation for people' because it evokes thoughts of nature reserves - places where we could have built houses and roads, but chose not to because the loss would be huge," Gates wrote.
The Microsoft co-founder cited several examples, including medical professionals who cared for his father, who died of Alzheimer's disease six years ago. He wrote: "There was something about the care they gave my father that was so 'human' and irreplaceable that no robot could do. Imagine a robot giving you the bad news that you have a terminal illness. Technically, there's no reason a robot couldn't do it, but it shouldn't."
According to Gates, artificial intelligence can bring great benefits in fields such as agriculture and medicine, creating breakthroughs in disease prevention and treatment. But he also noted that the transition to the AI era carries many potential risks such as exacerbating unemployment, harming children's development, and creating favorable conditions for crime. "As they become more powerful, models may begin to act against human interests," he warned.
Gates believes that it is necessary to quickly control these serious risks, proposing to tax AI or robots the same way organizations must tax employees, to slow the transition away from using human labor.
In the essay, Bill Gates warned that AI will affect "national security, jobs, education, taxes, energy, elections, air, water, public health, financial systems, law enforcement, transportation, public lands, information technology systems" and that governments are not ready for the scale of this technology's impact. Therefore, he concluded, the top priority is to build a "domestic and international framework to respond to AI".
The billionaire also said that as part of global efforts, the US and China need to cooperate to some extent. According to the Guardian, his staff is arranging a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November to discuss the global effort to mitigate the growing risks from artificial intelligence.