Bill Gates: The world is not ready for the AI era

Bill Gates published a nearly 6,000-word essay on GatesNotes titled “A Turbulent AI Era and Critical Choices to Make,” in which he called the transition to the AI era one of the most turbulent periods in human history and acknowledged that no one has a plan to manage this transition.

Compiled by Sergey KostenchukPublished 2026-08-28Updated 2026-09-18

2026-08-28 Safety OpenAI

Bill Gates: The world is not ready for the AI era

Bill Gates published a nearly 6,000-word essay on GatesNotes titled “A Turbulent AI Era and Critical Choices to Make”: the transition to the AI era will be one of the most turbulent periods in history, and no one has a plan to manage it. The main risks are job losses, cyber threats, and the impact of AI on young people.

🌍 Gates proposes AI institutions modeled on nuclear inspections, a reserve of professions for humans (Human Reserved), and a tax on tokens and robots for retraining. The remaining $200 billion of the foundation will be spent over 20 years with active use of AI.

👤 The first to be hit are sales, support, development, and lawyers. In a study by Stanford and Carnegie Mellon (1,131 Character.AI users), close communication with an AI companion was correlated with worsening well-being. The essay is available for free on GatesNotes.

Source 1: https://www.gatesnotes.com/a-turbulent-ai-era-and-critical-choices-to-make

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