Bill Gates predicted something this summer: The adoption of AI in the labor market is going to be something “very turbulent” that we’re not ready for. The Microsoft co-founder leans towards taxing AI because if employers pay taxes on the salaries of the people they hire, why not do the same with the AI tokens and robots you use in your manufacturing process.
In fact, the reality is just the opposite: if you buy a robot, you can deduct the cost. Well, the philanthropist and billionaire was interviewed by The Observer and once again focused on the problem he believes in: business incentives. And he emphasized again: the system rewards the replacement of people with machines.
How easy it is to replace (human) jobs. Bill Gates describes AI as an evolutionary phenomenon that relegates humans to the background, since we will no longer be the smartest things on the planet. And it transcends the technical to the political: who is going to pay for the transition. The progress Gates has made sounds bleak: the replacement of nearly all job skills by artificial intelligence. First for innovation and office work and then, thanks to humanoid robots, for business.
Faced with this reality, Bill Gates explained that the way work incentives are designed (in his opinion, poorly), the dominant logic is to “hire robots, fire people and never look back.” That’s why he maintains that even if prosperity (at a macro level, houses for unemployed people would be something else) would improve, people’s incomes would fall. And this is without talking about the risks of this advancement of AI: Bioterrorism and cyber attacks are an immediate threat on the black sheet of possibilities, and by the end of the 20s, that AI works beyond human control and we have to be serious about alignment.
Gates plans to mitigate this. The Microsoft co-founder also emphasized taxing the use of AI and proposed a “token tax”. Their argument is that public revenues that fund safety nets (benefits) will decline during transitions, even if overall prosperity improves. So for those who will lose their jobs, the government will need new sources to pay for future education and retraining.
Similarly, he defends that billionaires pay more and makes a confession: he would agree to pay a little more than double what he paid. According to the Observer, he paid about $14 billion in taxes during his lifetime and was willing to pay $40 billion. That’s why he asks governments to find a way that is considered fair to tax the big fortunes, although he warns that this does not address the gap between public spending and revenue in many rich countries. Regarding the potential threat of an overly advanced AI, he urges the United States and China to cooperate to avoid these risks, which he directly calls a “challenge to humanity.”
Why is it important?. If each company wins (in economic terms) by replacing people, the collective result can be disastrous, even though this is a good idea from a business management logic. So Gates proposes measures that affect the entire society. Indeed, there are already signs: artificial intelligence is reducing job opportunities for juniors. This Stanford study shows that 22- to 25-year-olds who have been exposed to AI have 19% lower employment than expected.
Microsoft Hall well Worst example. What a cruel irony that a few days later, despite its best economic moment, Microsoft indicated that it has about 60,000 employees, 27% of which are left from offices in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom, and that affects employees at the level of 70 or below, so it has proposed a voluntary exit plan. And watch out, because it wasn’t the first incident of the year: Already in April it launched a voluntary retirement program for about 8,750 eligible employees in the US, and in July it reported about 5,000 layoffs, as reported by Reuters.
That’s not new either: In May 2025 it laid off about 6,000 workers, about 3% of its global workforce, citing “organizational changes to better position the company in a dynamic market,” and in July 2025 it said goodbye to another 9,000 employees. Meanwhile, the company is investing big in AI, spending $41 billion in capital expenditures in the last fiscal quarter alone. Bill Gates may have co-founded Microsoft, but of course in this transition to the AI labor market of the future, creators and incumbent companies are in different positions.
In Xataka | Bill Gates: “I think we should tax AI, if you hire someone right now, you tax their salary”
In Xataka | “It’s going to be very turbulent”: Why Bill Gates believes we’re not ready for what’s coming our way with AI
