Bill Gates names the jobs AI will take next
Key Points
- Gates named sales, customer support, software engineering and paralegal work as the first to go
- Entry- and mid-level roles carry the highest risk of replacement
- Robots will compete for construction and hospitality work by the end of the decade
- The losses will not reverse with the economic cycle, unlike the 1930s
- Software engineering will see smaller net losses as cheaper costs raise demand
Bill Gates has named the jobs AI will replace first, and warned that those losses will not return with the next economic upturn.
The 70-year-old Microsoft co-founder and Gates Foundation chairman published his assessment in a long essay on his personal blog, Gates Notes, on Wednesday (26 August).
Gates named sales, online and telephone customer support, software engineering and paralegal work as the roles most likely to go first.
The disruption then spreads into tasks that currently require trained staff, including assessing loan applications, running data analysis and triaging patients in hospitals.
Entry- and mid-level jobs carry the greatest risk, according to Gates, because the new roles that AI creates will mostly demand skills that take many years to acquire.
He said white-collar employment has already taken a modest hit, with employment falling significantly among young workers in the jobs most exposed to replacement after generative AI was widely adopted, while their older colleagues went largely untouched.
Software engineering stands as a partial exception to that pattern. Falling costs will generate fresh demand in the field, so net losses there will be smaller than elsewhere provided that work such as design remains better done by humans.
Blue-collar employment sits directly behind the white-collar losses. Gates said dexterous robots are advancing fastest in China, well out of sight of most American workers, and that “smart” robots will begin competing with people on physical tasks in construction and hospitality by the end of the decade.
Once a single company adopts robots and uses the savings to cut its prices, its competitors face immediate pressure to match the move, and start-ups will step in wherever established firms hesitate.
Gates said that “without the right policies there will be far fewer than exist today,” referring to the number of jobs that will remain available.
He drew a comparison with the Great Depression, when unemployment in the United States reached roughly 25% in 1933 and stayed in double digits for much of the decade that followed.
That recovery arrived on the back of returning demand, investment and growth, whereas AI-driven losses will not reverse on an economic cycle.
Gates said the largest shift arrives at the point AI produces nearly error-free work, because companies will then have every commercial incentive to run it without a human checking in at all.
