Bill Gates: ‘AI Will Change Society,” Including the Job Market

Bill Gates may call himself an eternal optimist, but he has added a caveat to that characterization after citing concerns over what the AI era will bring.

In his latest annual The Year Ahead letter, which touched on areas including healthcare, climate change, and education, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist explained that he remains an optimist “because I see what innovation accelerated by artificial intelligence will bring. But these days, my optimism comes with footnotes.”

Bad actors and a changing job market

One notable footnote is that AI will change society more than anything else humans have created, Gates said. In the next decade, he predicts the two biggest challenges will be the use of AI by bad actors and its disruption of the job market.

“Both are real risks that we need to do a better job managing,’’ Gates said. “We’ll need to be deliberate about how this technology is developed, governed, and deployed.”

An even greater risk than a naturally caused pandemic, Gates believes, “is that a non-government group will use open source AI tools to design a bioterrorism weapon.”

On the job front, AI capabilities will make it possible to produce more goods and services with less labor — and could even reduce the work week, Gates wrote. Job demand in software development has already been disrupted. He expects disruption to warehouse and phone support roles “will be more immediate” once the technology becomes more capable, he said.

Beyond software development, AI’s impact on the job market is already being felt, and Gates anticipates that it will continue to increase over the next five years. He noted that AI makes software developers at least twice as efficient, reducing coding costs and increasing code elasticity.

Gates also provided a historical reference, pointing out that as computing costs decreased, the overall market expanded.

“Even if the transition takes longer than I expect, we should use 2026 to prepare ourselves for these changes — including which policies will best help spread the wealth and deal with the important role jobs play in our society,’’ Gates said.

Why stay optimistic?

Despite these concerns, Gates remains optimistic because of “two core human capabilities.” The first is our ability to anticipate problems and prepare for them, and ensure innovations work to our advantage.

The second is “our capacity to care about each other.” If we continue to utilize both, Gates concluded, “real progress” will be made in the years ahead.

Also read: The biggest AI moments of 2025 spanned surveillance misuse, layoffs, and humanoid robots.

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