Bill Gates published an essay on Gates Notes titled A Turbulent AI Era and Critical Choices to Make, in which he warns that artificial intelligence is ushering in the most turbulent period in human history and that there is no plan to manage it.
The text, almost 6,000 words long, organizes the diagnosis into three structural risks and a set of proposals that include taxes on AI tokens and on robots that replace workers.
1. Job loss and economic disruption
Gates notes that AI, for the first time, can replace and surpass human cognition. Job displacement will begin with middle-tier roles — sales, customer service, software engineering, legal assistance — and will extend to credit assessment, data analysis and patient triage. By the end of the decade, the falling cost of robotics will reach manual work as well.
The mechanism is cumulative: once one company cuts costs by replacing positions, the competition is forced to do the same. Gates compares the potential magnitude to the Great Depression, when U.S. unemployment reached about 25% in 1933 and stayed in double digits for the rest of the decade.
His central proposal is twofold: a tax on AI tokens (the unit of consumption by which model usage is measured and billed) and a tax on robots that replace human workers, offsetting the tax deduction companies receive today when they buy them. The revenue would fund retraining programs and social safety nets.
Gates also proposes reserving certain roles exclusively for people — caregivers, mental health professionals and some medical staff — arguing that there are decisions it isn’t appropriate for a robot to deliver, such as a terminal diagnosis.
2. Cybersecurity and the amplification of crime
The second structural threat is that AI lowers the barrier to entry for attackers with limited skills. Gates warns that even criminals without advanced technical knowledge will be able to launch sophisticated attacks against hospitals, financial institutions, power grids, drinking-water systems and social-benefit platforms.
The problem is asymmetric: attackers gain capabilities faster than defenders can patch vulnerabilities. Gates also warns about dual-use risk in biotechnology: the same AI that speeds up drug development could make it easier to design deadly diseases.
3. Social harm and youth development
The third risk concerns human relationships. Gates describes how AI assistants, always available and designed never to contradict the user, create dependence. He cites a study from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon that links smaller social networks with greater dependence on chatbots, and heavy use with worse mental health indicators. In Chile, that ground is already fragile: mental health is the leading cause of medical leave, as we showed in our special report mental health in Chile (in Spanish).
For young people, the effect is particularly worrying: the same tool that enables unprecedented learning could reduce real learning by removing the manageable frustration that shapes critical thinking.
No global brake, but a plan
Gates acknowledges that he won’t support slowing AI development globally, because geopolitical and economic incentives push development at full speed, unlike the PC revolution, which had 20 years of adaptation. His argument is that the transition will be too fast for current governance frameworks.
Instead, he proposes that civil society take part alongside governments and technology companies in building domestic and international governance frameworks. As he puts it, AI will be either the greatest equalizer ever invented or the worst source of injustice.
Sources
- A Turbulent AI Era and Critical Choices to Make — Gates Notes
- Bill Gates advirtió los riesgos de la IA: pérdida de empleos, ciberataques y reemplazo de relaciones humanas — Infobae, Sep 1, 2026 (in Spanish)
- Bill Gates diagnoses problems with AI, but an expert questions his prescription — ABC News
- Bill Gates sounds the alarm on an AI transition — Axios, Aug 26, 2026
- Excellent new Bill Gates essay on the urgency of having a coherent AI plan — Gary Marcus
By Rodrigo Cornejo, founder of Mamífero.