Bill Gates Predicts Some May Live ‘Like the Amish’ in the Future as Microsoft Reportedly Offers 60,000 Workers Buyouts in AI Push

NEED TO KNOW

• Bill Gates, the 70-year-old cofounder of Microsoft, warned that AI needs to be government-regulated in a recent podcast interview

• As the emerging technology shifts industries forever, some people may want to live "like the Amish," he said

• The next two decades are "going to be as tumultuous a period as there's been in human history," the philanthropist warned

Once again, Bill Gates is warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence, specifically a "tumultuous" 20-year period of transition before humanity potentially gets to reap the full benefits of the emerging technology. In that new world, he believes some people may even choose to live "like the Amish."

"My big concern is this 20-year transition period, where they'll have winners and losers and a lot of disruption," the 70-year-old Microsoft cofounder said in a recent episode of the Decoder podcast , "and we have to get through that in order to get to that period of abundance."

The interview aired as the company, where Gates served as CEO until 2000, announced that it was offering employees a "voluntary exit offer" on Monday, Oct. 26. Affecting around 60,000 workers, CNBC , Yahoo Finance and the Financial Times reported, the buyout appears to be offsetting the costs of implementing AI infrastructure.

In Gates' extensive interview with Decoder host Nilay Patel, the billionaire philanthropist said he believes that AI needs to be regulated, noting that the government already oversees various industries which, he argues, "are not a millionth as dangerous as AI."

"Once you have multiple competitors, the level of responsibility can't be with the companies. It's completely obvious," said Gates, according to the podcast. "The responsibility becomes the government's responsibility, just like it is with every other dangerous product, although the magnitude there and the degree of change is minuscule by comparison."

He said that it's imperative to secure society's safety.

"You don't want to enable bioterrorism," Gates told Patel. "We have created something that takes out of the hands of nation states — actually the larger of them — the ability to do dramatic harms."

But Gates also views AI as a "profound technology," with the ability to "do good" and change society at a much faster rate. Industries across the world will be impacted, he said.

"If this was just a machine that could work in medicine or just in law or just in education, that alone would be incredibly disruptive," said Gates on the podcast. "But [it will be] every area of human activity — so far it's white collar, intellectual work, but fairly soon it will be physical activity and blue collar work as well, through humanoid robots."

But, he said, people have a choice about what limits they place on AI in the workforce.

"If we don't choose to massively slow down or stop, then we will have robots that can build houses, grow food, do surgery," Gates said on the podcast. "And none of the things that human labor provides to the economy will be necessary for most goods and services."

Some professions, such as childcare, sports, food preparation and art, could be reserved for humans.

"Even though the AI could do those things better, we would choose to do that," he said on Decoder . Certain groups of people may even choose to live outside of the presence of AI.

"We're going to have real choices. We have had groups — not large groups, but like the Amish — who don't live at the technology frontier," said Gates. "A lot of humanity may choose not to live at the technological frontier because of things we get from helping each other or coming up with unique ideas."

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The former Microsoft CEO is among a range of leaders and researchers in the industry who have decided to sound the alarm about the inherent risks that come with AI.

At the end of his interview, Gates said that the rise of the technology "is going to be as tumultuous a period as there's been in human history."

"I hate being the bearer of concerning news on this, but it's even worse not to tell people that this is coming," he said on the podcast. "We have choices as humans to make about how we shape it."

PEOPLE has reached out to Microsoft for comment.

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