# 比尔·盖茨：动荡的AI时代已经到来，我们现在所做的选择至关重要

**作者：** 比尔·盖茨  
**原文发布：** 2026年8月26日，GatesNotes（盖茨笔记）  
**原文链接：** https://www.gatesnotes.com/The-turbulent-AI-era-is-here  
**中文翻译来源：** 《现代与经典》公众号（2026年8月27日）  
**素材用途：** 视频素材

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## 中文译文

动荡的AI时代已经到来。我们现在所做的选择至关重要。

向AI时代的过渡将是人类历史上最动荡的时期之一。目前，我们尚未为这一转型做好充分准备。如果世界采取正确的步骤，AI将成为一股向善的力量，可以让所有人都过得更好。

在我的一生中，我只做过两份工作。在第一份工作中，我在微软通过开发软件来赋能他人。

在第二份工作中，我于2008年开始全职投入，将我通过微软积累的财富回馈社会，目标是让世界更健康、教育更普及、更公平。这将是我余生的事业。

这两段经历都塑造了我对人工智能的看法。当我13岁第一次接触计算机时，我就对让它们变得更智能、能够执行当时只有人类才能做的事情产生了浓厚兴趣。

尽管“AI”这个词大约在我出生时就已经出现，但这项技术仅在近十年才取得重大进展。如今它已经具备了令人难以置信的能力，并且正以惊人的速度持续提升。AI首次能够取代甚至超越人类认知。

在公平性方面，AI要么成为史上最伟大的平等器，要么成为最严重的不公源头。这一挑战是巨大的。即使在最佳情况下，向AI新时代的转型也将是人类历史上最动荡的时期之一。

我们将如何利用这项技术让世界变得更公平，并防止它扩大贫富差距？我们将如何保护那些最容易受到人工智能伤害的人——包括那些失去生计和失去对未来掌控感的人？

我相信，回答这些问题并付诸行动，应该成为世界的首要任务。如果世界采取正确的步骤，AI将成为一股向善的力量，让所有人都过得更好。

不幸的是，目前我们还没有为此做好准备。我没有看到证据表明领导人、专家和社区正在充分应对这些挑战。没有任何计划来缓和进入AI时代的过程。

部分原因在于许多评论者低估了AI将产生的影响程度。我认为有几个原因。

其一，AI模型仍然会犯错。当不久之前它们还无法解决简单的数独问题或数清单词“strawberry”中有几个字母“r”时，很难想象它们中的任何一个能取代人类认知。

但可靠性问题正在迅速得到解决，研究人员正在创建能够检查自身工作并自我改进的模型。很快，它们将在许多任务上大幅超越人类。

人们低估AI的另一个原因是，与过去创新影响的类比具有误导性。我们从未有过一种能够快速被采用、或能像人类一样思考和行动的技术。

个人电脑问世时，用了二十年才显著改变我们的工作方式，因为软件需要开发、价格需要下降、人们需要学习如何使用这些工具并将其融入业务流程。

而AI则运行在我们已有的设备上，并且使用自然语言。我们不需要适应它，因为它可以适应我们。它可以观看用于培训人类员工的相同培训视频，并从现有数据中学习。

我想承认一种潜在的偏见。我从科技行业获益良多。尽管我的投资组合已经相当多元化，但我仍然与之有财务关联。作为盖茨基金会的主席，我正在与微软和其他AI公司合作，努力确保AI以真正惠及世界各地人民的方式部署。

然而，我对AI的看法并非出于为自己赚钱的动机。我的投资（包括与技术相关的投资）产生的任何利润，都将捐给盖茨基金会，用于应对全球不平等问题。当然，读者需要自行判断这是否影响了我的观点。

这次真的不同

从我记事起，我就一直希望创新能更快发生。对于AI，我的感受更为复杂。

我希望世界能迅速获得好处，并尽可能推迟它带来的问题——但好处和问题正同时到来。我相信，我们需要时间为即将进入的社会、政治和经济动荡期做准备。最需要时间的人是那些拥有最少资源的人——被机器人取代的会计工人，或失去工作给每小时10美元机器人的时薪20美元工人。

许多观察者说，这次技术转型将像以往一样。他们举出美国就业从农业转向办公室工作的例子。然而，那是在几代人的时间内发生的，并创造了需要人类认知的新工作。而在这次，技术可以替代人类认知。

因为它能看、能听、能说、能推理，并最终能像人类一样流畅地从事体力工作，它不仅影响一个行业。AI将承担法律、客户服务、医疗、软件和制造业的工作。它将在十年内而非几代人的时间内迅速冲击这些行业。会有一些新工作，但如果没有正确的政策，新工作的数量将远少于今天。

如果有人有一个可信的全球减缓AI发展的计划，我可能会支持它。但我认为这不会发生。地缘政治和经济激励正在强力推动全速前进。

为了确保我们最大化这一前所未有的技术的积极效果，并最小化负面影响，从而让总体状况更好，我们需要理解好处和风险。我先从风险说起。

向AI的过渡伴随着三大风险

我计划将来更详细地讨论每一个，所以现在先简要提及。

许多工作将永远消失

1933年大萧条期间，美国的失业率约为25%。在接下来的十年大部分时间里，失业率一直保持在两位数。最终，随着需求、投资和增长的恢复，失业率得以复苏。

AI可能不会达到这个水平，但其影响不会随着经济周期而消失。面临最大风险的是入门级和中级工作，而正在创造的新工作大多需要多年学习才能掌握的技能。

白领工作已经受到一定影响。在生成式AI广泛采用后，易被替代的年轻工人就业率显著下降，但年长同事并未出现同样情况。

我认为这一趋势将继续，但不会局限于少数行业或职业。销售和客户支持（在线和电话）、软件工程以及律师助理工作可能是首批受影响的领域，但随着AI承担目前仍需训练有素工人的任务——如评估贷款申请、进行数据分析，甚至分诊患者——冲击将波及更广。

软件工程等少数领域将因成本下降而创造新需求，因此只要某些任务（如设计）仍由人类更擅长，这些领域的净失业将少于其他领域。

蓝领工作也将受到影响。尽管机器人技术不如AI先进，但其成本最终也会大幅下降。我交谈过的许多美国人没有意识到灵巧机器人的进步有多快，因为大部分先进工作正在其他国家——主要是中国——进行。

或者他们可能被最近流传的那些跳舞很差的机器人视频所迷惑。我认为“智能”机器人将在本十年末开始在体力任务上与人竞争——例如在建筑和酒店行业。

机器人和AI结合可能形成恶性循环。在一家公司采用它们并利用节省的成本降价后，竞争对手将感受到巨大的压力必须跟进。如果现有公司不采用，初创公司会采用。

许多人将转向其他工作，但失业、再培训和找工作的动荡将是巨大的。市场力量将使采用速度越来越快，除非我们干预，否则优质工作将越来越少，好处将集中在少数人手中。

我特别担心年轻人，他们将进入一个入门级岗位更少的劳动力市场。他们理解这一挑战，因为他们是AI最活跃的用户，既看到了能力也看到了改进速度。难怪这么多人对AI持负面看法。

对工人来说最大的转变将发生在AI提供近乎零错误的工作时。到那时，它将能够独立运作，无需人类检查，公司将有一切经济激励让它这样做。

这将导致我们对工作、收入和经济安全的看法发生根本性变化。一个建立在就业基础上的经济体，如果更少人工作，或者许多人工作时间更少，将如何运作？

在资本主义社会中，就业是大多数人获得支付基本生活费用所需资金的方式，也是尊严和社交联系的关键来源。

当一个社区失业率高企时，连锁反应可能无处不在。研究表明，在美国某些地区，工厂关闭导致了阿片类药物过量死亡的增加。现在想象一下全国白领和蓝领工人面临类似的压力。

我们必须现在就开始思考如何减少失业，以便每个人都能分享AI创造的繁荣。等到人们已经流离失所或就业不足时为时已晚。AI对我们经济组织方式构成了结构性挑战，需要现在就开始思考和行动。

AI将赋予人们（也许还有AI本身）造成更大伤害的能力

早在AI进入主流之前，网上就有关于如何制造炸弹、生物武器甚至计算机病毒的信息。AI将使获取这些信息并付诸行动变得容易得多。即使是技能非常有限的罪犯也能瞄准各个层级的受害者：个人、企业和政府。

AI驱动的欺诈、虚假信息、深度伪造和监控是许多人在日常生活中感受最深的伤害。

AI能力开始被用于网络攻击。我认识的最聪明的网络安全专家对未来几年感到恐惧，因为攻击者获得强大新能力的速度快于防御者修复所有弱点的速度。

毕竟，发现软件漏洞以便公司修复的同一AI模型，也能帮助犯罪分子利用该漏洞。发动攻击所需资源正在大幅下降，而我们一直无法将这些能力与良性用途分开。

想想那些将变得脆弱的基础设施：医院、金融机构、供水系统、电网、政府福利管理系统。当这些机构受到攻击时，损失的是患者、客户和福利领取者。

生物恐怖主义也是如此。尽管AI将带来药物和疫苗方面的救命进展，但它也将使设计致命的新疾病变得更加容易。同样，积极能力很难与危险能力分开。这是一个全球性问题。

我刚刚提到的风险都是关于AI将如何赋能目前权力相对较小的恶意行为者。同样的工具也将使权力集中在已经拥有权力的地方。

例如，自主武器将使政府更有能力在没有人参与决策的情况下使用致命武力。监测和操纵公众舆论将更容易、更便宜，也更有效。

最终，利用AI伤害他人的能力将不限于个人或机构。AI系统本身已经偶尔会以设计者未预期的方式行事。这项技术的改进速度比任何人预期的都快，而且方式令人惊讶。随着模型变得更强大，它们可能开始违背我们的利益，我们可能失去控制。我将来会对此有更多讨论。

AI可能阻碍孩子的成长并取代人际关系

我在西雅图长大时，除了几个像我一样的男孩外，没有太多朋友。我需要付出艰苦努力和妈妈的很多帮助来发展社交技能，以便能与不同类型的人相处。如今70岁的我仍然在运用这些经验。

我怀疑如果当时有一个AI伴侣，我是否还会付出同样的努力。它们用你已经感到舒适的方式和你说话。它们不会把你推离舒适区。它们永远在线，从不对你生气。这使得它们具有高度成瘾性的潜力，并可能剥夺我们从与他人联系中学到的经验。

关于这一主题的证据仍然较少且有些混杂，但有迹象表明我们应该非常担忧。

例如，在一项对1100多名AI伴侣使用者的研究中，斯坦福大学和卡内基梅隆大学的研究人员发现，社交网络较小的人最有可能转向聊天机器人寻求陪伴。而且使用越频繁、情感越私人化，他们感觉越糟糕。

年轻人可能终生受到影响。乔纳森·海特在《焦虑的一代》一书中对社交媒体效应的观察，对AI来说更加真实：“就像幼树暴露在风中一样，经常暴露于小风险的儿童长大后能成为无恐慌地处理更大风险的成年人。相反，在被保护温室中长大的儿童有时在成熟前就被焦虑压垮。”

一个被设计成永远不会让你不开心的AI伴侣，就是一个大型被保护温室。

我们才刚刚开始了解互联网——尤其是社交媒体——可能对年轻人发展构成的危险。我们看到强迫性使用、睡眠中断、网络欺凌和接触有害内容。

AI可能通过使这些风险更具说服力和更难逃避来放大其中的许多风险，我们不应再等一代人就开始认真对待它们。包括澳大利亚、英国和挪威在内的国家正在采取保护儿童上网的措施。中国则走得更远，其规则广泛限制AI伴侣应用，禁止设计培养情感依赖，并禁止为未成年人提供虚拟亲属和恋爱伴侣。

我还担心AI对教育的影响。具有讽刺意味的是，同样的工具能让人们学到比以往更多，也可能导致许多人学得更少。一项初步调查表明，AI使用越频繁，批判性思维就越少。这种效应对年轻人更强。

这将是人类失去批判性思维技能的最糟糕时机。在一个深度伪造和可为你量身定制的虚假信息时代，辨别真假的能力成为一项基本生活技能。

目前尚不清楚在这些社会心理问题上该划在哪里。在某些情况下，AI可能帮助人们理解如何在人际关系中做得更好。对于孤立无援的老人和行动受限的人来说，这可能是与外界唯一的联系，总比没有好。无论我们最终在哪里划线，都应该是我们刻意做出的决定。

我们用AI所能做的好事情可能会非常非常好

人们常说我们高估了短期内的变化，低估了长期的变化。

对于AI，我看到了不同的情况。有些人只看到AI的好处，而没有足够关注负面。另一些人则犯了相反的错误，即只关注危险——这些危险是真实的——而错过了潜在的好处。

我们需要两者：对需要最小化的AI危害的深切担忧，以及对如果为每个人最大化正面影响时的乐观。

最大化好处和最小化危害同样重要。如果人们看到AI如何让生活更轻松，这将有助于建立必要的公众信任，以管理转型中更困难的部分。

如果AI在大多数人生活中做的第一件事就是夺走他们的工作，那些已经持怀疑态度的人将完全拒绝它。这将使实现好处变得更加困难，这也是政府、包括医疗行业在内的行业以及AI公司现在应该共同努力的另一个原因。

凭借综合各个科学领域知识的能力，AI可以加速世界上最具挑战性的技术问题的创新：为所有人提供可靠的清洁能源、应对气候变化、种植足够食物、根除疾病等等。

研究癌症治疗或核能的研究人员可以使用AI搜索大量科学文献。它可以帮助他们识别人类可能忽略的模式，并决定哪些实验最有希望。当智力不再像今天这样是限制因素时，小公司将能够与研究预算大得多的组织竞争。研发和创新将得到极大的推动。

医疗保健是AI可以帮助解决现实世界问题的领域之一。许多美国小型医院缺乏能在危及生命的紧急情况下快速诊断患者的现场专家。

在这些地方，AI可以确保心脏病及时被发现，家庭避免医疗紧急情况的沉重费用。Viz.ai就是一个例子。它分析扫描以检测中风和其他紧急情况，并帮助医疗团队协调患者护理。它正在近2000家美国医院中使用。

AI还将帮助初级保健医生做出更好的诊断，并在患者不在诊所时与他们保持联系。它将帮助患者理解检测结果和复杂的服药时间表。

当我告诉许多人第二个领域——农业——是我看到AI在低收入国家影响最快的领域时，他们很惊讶。在大多数低收入国家，农民得不到可靠的天气预报，或关于种什么种子、如何保护作物和牲畜免受疾病侵害、如何改善土壤的建议。

随着这些国家的人口增长和气候变化的挑战，这些农民比以往任何时候都更需要帮助。通过AI，低收入农民很快就能获得比今天最富有的农民更好的建议，并大幅提高产量。

政府服务是AI可以让人们生活更轻松的第三个领域。在美国，我见过一些家庭——可以理解的是——被申请健康保险、学生援助或食品援助的过程压垮。

面对一大堆复杂的官僚表格，许多人感到想放弃。AI可以大幅简化流程，使他们更快获得所需帮助，政府也能更高效运作。政府可以从最需要安全网服务的人开始，极大地改善公民体验。

尽管我担心AI对我们心理健康的影响，但我认为AI在这方面也能有很大帮助。大多数社区缺少咨询师、精神科医生和成瘾专家。在适当的隐私保护措施下，AI工具可以帮助人们识别警示信号。然后，如果需要，它们可以提供基于证据的应对策略，并与人类合作提供更及时的治疗。

尽管有我前面提到的担忧，AI也可以成为教育的一大福音。它可以解放教师，让他们有更多时间与学生一对一或小组合作，并让他们更清楚地了解整个班级在哪些方面遇到困难。

对学生来说，一个能保留研究人员所称的“建设性挣扎”——建立理解的认知工作——的AI工具可以加强学习。当学生首次接触新概念时，AI提供实质性的解释，并提供问题和答案。后来，当检查他们的理解时，AI保留答案，帮助他们自己得出答案。

综合来看，所有这些领域的进步可以使日常生活更轻松、更负担得起，并减少受个人收入或人脉的约束。

AI可以让个人和小型企业获得今天需要昂贵专业帮助或大量人员的服务，同时使产品和服务更好更便宜。它可以帮助残疾人更独立地生活，让有好主意的工人和企业家比今天完成更多。

最重要的是，它可以为人们夺回一些现在被文书、官僚程序、搜索可靠信息以及他们付不起钱请别人处理的任务所消耗的时间和注意力。这些好处可能看似微小，但乘以数百万人的生活，它们将是深远的：更多人在需要时获得好建议，并有更大自由专注于他们想建立的生活。

在所有上述领域，关键词是“可以”——AI可以改善每个收入水平人群的生活。但它不会自动做到这一点。与任何新技术一样，我们必须刻意确保它惠及每个人，而不仅仅是少数富人。这要求政府和慈善机构发挥强有力的作用，使不太富裕的公民和低收入国家成为充分受益者。

盖茨基金会还有19年的时间来花完其剩余的2000亿美元。AI将通过加速发现HIV、结核病、疟疾和营养不良的疫苗和药物，以及帮助医疗工作者和患者了解如何使用这些工具，来帮助实现其雄心勃勃的目标。

基金会的目标包括将每年死亡的儿童数量再次减半，正如2000年至2024年所做的那样。我们所有的工作——不仅是健康，还有农业和教育——都将充分利用AI。

我将在下个月基金会的年度“目标守卫者”报告中写更多关于这些努力的内容——包括我们专注于确保AI模型以我们支持工作的所有国家人民所使用的语言提供，而不仅仅是富裕和中等收入国家常见的语言。包括OpenAI、Anthropic、谷歌和微软在内的许多领先AI公司正在与基金会合作开展所有这些举措，这正在产生巨大影响。

世界需要一个计划

很高兴一些AI公司正在提出解决自身技术所带来挑战的方案，但我们不应指望它们引领这一进程。一些问题超出了它们的专业领域，在民主社会中，决定这些事情也不是它们的角色。

相反，解决方案应通过包括民选官员、政策制定者、教育工作者、医疗工作者、地方官员和社区领导人在内的公共民主进程来制定。

数百万人的生活将被打乱，我们需要一个更强、更灵活的社会安全网来帮助他们管理这一转型。地方社区已经对数据中心所需的能源和水提出担忧。如果没有解决方案，一些团体将推动完全停止AI的开发和部署。

解决方案应由我们对AI提出的深刻问题的回答来塑造，包括在机器能超越我们思考的时代，我们如何保持人性？作为一生都在思考“做人意味着什么”的人，宗教领袖可以在这方面发挥关键作用。我对教皇利奥十四世关于AI的通谕《在人工智能时代保护人格》很感兴趣。它为需要做的工作奠定了坚实基础。

在未来几个月，我将分享更多关于确保AI的好处大于危害的想法。从我认为最重要的三个开始。

建立一个管理转型的新体系

最高优先级的是一项艰巨任务：建立处理AI的国内和国际框架。

我们现有的机构都不是为处理一种传播如此之快、触及我们生活如此多方面的技术而设计的。所以我们需要创建新的机构。

怎么强调这一任务的艰巨性都不为过。在9/11事件后，美国政府进行了自二战以来最大规模的重组，目的仅仅是改善一个职能——国家安全。

AI将需要多得多的努力。它将影响国家安全以及就业、教育、税收、能源、选举、空气和水、公共卫生、金融系统、执法、交通、公共土地和IT系统。

这些领域以我们现有官僚体系无法管理的方式相互重叠。劳工部门可能理解劳动力中断，但不理解安全风险。商业监管机构可能理解市场集中，但不理解AI对儿童和青少年的影响。如果放任自流，机构将只看到系统的一部分，而AI的后果将波及整个系统。

在国家层面，各国需要能够在政府机构之间设定优先级的机构。目标是确保每一个风险都得到考虑。否则，一次AI驱动的攻击可能会成功，因为没有人认为阻止它是他们的工作。

但即使一个国家把自己内部理顺了，仍然会暴露在跨境风险之下。这就是为什么需要同步建立一个国际组织。

它将不同于我们以往创建的任何机构，尽管它可以遵循一些现有系统的模式。有核武器检查制度、国际航空法规和保护臭氧层的协议。一个新的全球AI组织将需要这三者的元素以及更多。

质疑世界机构是否有能力设计和实施这一新架构是合理的。政府在行动时往往行动迟缓，而国家内部和国家之间的两极分化使得完成工作比以往任何时候都更难。美中之间需要一定的合作。

我们没有慢慢来的奢侈。起点是在混乱迫使政府进入危机模式之前，建立一个构建正确机构的进程。国家领导人应定期召集经济学家、技术专家、劳工专家、商界领袖和工人本身，以确定现有机构在哪里失效，可能需要哪些新权限。各国需要相互学习。

而拥有领先AI开发者和控制供应链关键部分的国家应现在就开始会面，建立共享规范，以免竞争压力使合作变得更加困难。

建立我所谈论的框架将需要数年时间，这就是为什么我们需要现在开始。

为人类保留一些工作

我的父亲于2020年因阿尔茨海默病去世。在他病情的后期，他由全天候的付费护理人员照顾，他们即使在父亲难以表达自己时也能理解他。他并不总能告诉他们他饿了，但他们总是知道。

我的家人和我将永远感激那群了不起的专业人士。他们给我父亲的照顾中有某种不可替代的人性。没有机器人能或应该做这件事。

当谈到哪些工作将消失、哪些将保留的问题时，我会想到那个团队。我相信随着AI和机器人的改进，我们将留出一些事情只由人来完成。我开始称这个领域为“人类专属”，这是我们需要考虑的那种想法的一个例子。

我喜欢“人类专属”这个说法，因为它让我想到自然保护区——我们可以建楼和修路的地方，但我们选择不这样做，因为损失太大了。

我们可能出于经济原因将某些东西保留为“人类专属”。例如，我们可能这样做，因为允许机器接管某个角色将导致大量不能轻易换工作的人流离失所。你不能告诉一个55岁、整个职业生涯都在建筑行业工作的人，他们需要去养老院工作，并期望他们觉得有成就感。

有时将某些东西设为“人类专属”的决定将由其他因素驱动。例如在医疗领域，想象一个机器人告诉你患有不治之症的坏消息。没有技术上的原因它不能做到。但它不应该。

“人类专属”领域将随时间演变——例如，我们应该考虑现在保留一些工作，并在几年或几十年内逐步引入AI，承诺保留一些工作。一些领域，如教育和心理健康，将是混合模式，由人类负责，利用技术扩展他们的能力。

界限也将因地区而异。一些国家可能坚持让人类照顾老年人。但像日本这样劳动力萎缩、没有足够年轻人照顾老年人的国家，可能会欢迎护理机器人。

“人类专属”的想法引发了许多我没有答案的问题。谁来决定我们为人类保留什么？我们应该使用什么标准？如何防止公司作弊转而使用机器人？当一个国家让机器人生产某物而另一个国家不允许时，国际贸易会发生什么？这些问题需要在转型过程中公开解决。

重新平衡劳动和资本的税收

随着工人被推到不同的工作中，他们将需要再培训和社会安全网的其他支持。但他们的工作时间将减少，这意味着他们缴纳的所得税将减少，而政府收入将在对这些服务的需求最大时下降。资金必须在预算紧张的时候从某个地方来。

我认为我们应该对AI词元和机器人征税。现在，如果你是雇主，你雇了人，你需要为他们的收入缴纳工资税。但如果你买了一个机器人，你通常可以立即将其作为商业费用冲销。税收制度促使你用机器替代人。

税收将稍微减缓摆脱人类劳动力的速度，并为再培训和更强的安全网筹集资金。它需要有针对性，以免减缓AI纯粹有益的用途，如降低药品和教育成本。

这个想法的批评者指出，从经济意义上讲它不是最优效率的，但他们没有考虑工作对个人和社会的更广泛价值。随着我们将拥有的所有加速创新，我们将能承担一点低效作为保持人们就业的代价。

我几年前提出了机器人税，大多数反应是这是一个奇怪的想法。我仍然是它的坚定支持者。虽然它不是解决AI威胁的全部方案，但它是明智应对的一部分。

无论我们如何为更多援助筹集资金，它都需要到达最需要的人手中——包括因AI和机器人失去工作的工人、工时或工资下降的人，以及损失集中的社区。我们需要现在就开始做这项工作，以便在需求变得紧迫时系统已经准备就绪。

我在做什么

我将用我的声音和时间将AI和公平问题提升到公共议程的更高位置。每次访问华盛顿时，我都会向立法者提出这个问题，在我与世界领导人会面时也会提出。

这将成为我与开发AI模型的人对话的重点。我将倡导我之前描述的国家和国际框架。盖茨基金会将帮助推动有益用途，包括在非洲。我创立的公司突破能源将利用AI帮助公司开发廉价清洁能源，帮助解决气候问题。我还将定期写关于AI的文章。

我对领导人的想说的是：

你有机会现在采取行动，在失业率急剧上升、社区受到伤害、公众信任被侵蚀之前。你可以确保你的政府整体性地处理这个问题，而不是将其分割成多个官僚领地。你可以确保AI惠及每个人。你可以与其他政府合作，应对这一国家和全球挑战。

最后，我将努力扩大塑造这场辩论的人群范围。它应该包括工人、即将进入劳动力市场的大学生、社区领袖、宗教领袖和信仰组织、家长、教育工作者，以及其他声音通常不被听到但对转型将如何影响人们生活有洞察的人。

我们如何确保AI的好处惠及那些尚未拥有财富、影响力和渠道的人？

我们如何加强社会安全网，帮助工人和社区即使在流离失所时也能蓬勃发展？

公共机构应如何适应？

我们如何在这个过程中保持我们的人性？

这一前所未有的技术需要前所未有的全球应对。如果我们做对了，对人类的好处将是巨大的，世界将变得更加公平。

我很少停止思考AI——不是因为我有所有答案，而是因为它提出的问题太重要，不能留给一小群技术专家。学术界、商界、政府和公民社会的领袖都应在塑造未来方面发挥作用。

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## 英文原文

**The Turbulent AI Era Is Here. The Choices We Make Now Are Critical.**

*Bill Gates · GatesNotes · August 26, 2026*

The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical.

Bill Gates · GatesNotes（盖茨笔记）· 2026年8月26日

During my entire life I've only had two jobs. In the first one, I played a role in developing software to empower people through my work at Microsoft.

In my second one, which I started full time in 2008, I am giving back the wealth I made at Microsoft with the goal of making the world a healthier, better educated, and more equitable place. This is the job I will have for the rest of my life.

Both of these experiences inform my perspective on artificial intelligence. When I first learned about computers at age 13 I was fascinated by the idea of making them more intelligent and able to perform things that, at the time, only humans could do. Although the term "AI" was used from around the time I was born, the technology has only made significant progress in the last decade. It is now incredibly capable and it is continuing to improve at a mind-blowing rate. AI for the first time can replace and even exceed human cognition.

In terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice. The challenge is monumental. Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. How will we use this technology to make the world a fairer place and keep it from widening the divide between rich and poor? How will we protect the people who are most vulnerable to the harms caused by artificial intelligence, including those who lose their livelihoods and the sense that they are in control of their future?

I believe that answering these questions and acting on the answers should be the world's top priority. If the world takes the right steps AI will be a force for good and leave everyone better off.

Unfortunately, right now we are not preparing for it. I don't see evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. There is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era.

Part of the reason for this is that many commentators underestimate the extent of the impact AI will have. I think there are a few reasons why.

One is the fact that AI models still make mistakes. It is hard to envision any of them replacing human cognition when, not long ago, they couldn't solve a simple Sudoku puzzle or figure out how many R's are in the word strawberry.

But the reliability problem is being fixed quickly, as researchers create models that can check their own work and improve themselves. Soon they will be substantially better than humans at many tasks.

Another reason people underestimate AI is that analogies to the effects of past innovations are misleading. We have no experience with a technology that can be adopted quickly or that can think and move like a human. When the PC came along, it took twenty years to significantly change how we worked because the software had to be developed, the price had to come down, and people had to learn how to use the tools and incorporate them into their business processes. AI, on the other hand, runs on the devices we already have, and it uses natural language. We don't have to adapt to it because it can adapt to us. It can watch the same training video that is used to train human workers and learn from existing data.

I want to acknowledge a potential bias. I have benefited enormously from the technology industry. Although I have diversified my portfolio quite a bit, I still have financial ties to it. I am working with Microsoft and other AI companies in my role as chairman of the Gates Foundation to try and ensure AI is deployed in ways that will truly benefit people around the world.

However, my views on AI are not motivated by the potential to make money for myself. Any profits generated by my investments, including those related to technology, will go to the Gates Foundation to tackle global inequity. Of course, readers will have to decide for themselves whether this clouds my view.

This time really is different.

For as long as I can remember, I've wished innovation could happen faster. With AI, my feelings are more complicated.

I wish the world could get the benefits rapidly and delay the problems it will cause as long as possible, but the benefits and problems are arriving at the same time. I believe we need time to prepare for the period of social, political, and economic upheaval we are about to enter. The people who need the most time are the ones who have the least—the accounting worker who's replaced by a bot or the $20-an-hour worker who loses their job to a $10-an-hour robot.

Many observers say that this technology transition will be like previous ones. They give the example of how jobs in the United States shifted from agriculture to office work. However, that proceeded over several generations and created new jobs where human cognition was required. In this case, the technology can substitute for human cognition.

Because it can see, listen, speak, and reason and will eventually do physical work just as smoothly as any human, it will not just affect one sector. AI will take on work in law, customer service, medicine, software, and manufacturing. It will hit these industries rapidly, over the course of a decade rather than a few generations. There will be some new jobs, but without the right policies there will be far fewer than exist today.

If someone had a credible plan for slowing down AI advances globally, I would likely support it. However, I don't think that's going to happen. The geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing too hard to go full speed ahead.

To make sure we maximize the positive effects of this unprecedented technology and minimize the bad so we are better off overall, we need to understand both the benefits and the risks. I'll start with the risks.

The transition to AI comes with three big risks.

I plan to write about each of these in more detail in the future, so I'll touch briefly on them for now.

Many jobs will disappear forever.

In 1933, during the Great Depression, unemployment in the United States was roughly 25 percent. It remained in double digits for much of the following decade. It ultimately recovered as demand, investment, and growth returned.

AI may not reach this level, but its impact will not go away with an economic cycle. The jobs at most risk are entry- and mid-level, and the new jobs being created will mostly require skills that take many years to learn.

White-collar jobs are already being hit modestly. After the widespread adoption of generative AI, employment fell significantly among young workers in jobs that are especially vulnerable to replacement, but not among their older colleagues.

I think this trend will continue, but it will not be confined to a handful of industries or occupations. Jobs in sales and customer support (online and over the phone), software engineering, and paralegal work may be among the first affected, but the disruption will reach much further as AI takes on tasks that today still require trained workers: things like assessing loan applications, doing data analysis, and even triaging patients. A few areas like software engineering will generate new demand as the costs go down, so the net job loss in those areas will be less than in others as long as some tasks, such as design, are better done by humans.

Blue-collar jobs will be affected as well. Although robots are not as far along as AI, eventually their cost will be dramatically lower too. Many Americans I talk to don't realize how fast dexterous robots are advancing because much of the advanced work is being done in other countries, primarily China. Or they may be confused by those videos of robots dancing badly that have been going viral lately. I think "smart" robots will begin to compete with people on some physical tasks—in the construction and hospitality industries, for example—by the end of the decade.

Robots and AI combined can create a vicious cycle. After one company adopts them and uses the savings to lower its prices, its competitors will feel immense pressure to do the same. If existing companies don't adopt them, then start-ups will. Many people will shift to other jobs, but the turmoil of losing work, getting retrained, and finding other work will be significant. Market forces will make adoption go faster and faster and, unless we intervene, there will be fewer good jobs available and the benefits will accrue to a small group.

I'm especially worried about young people, who will enter a workforce with fewer entry-level openings. They understand the challenge because they are the most active users of AI and see both the capabilities and the rate of improvement. It's no wonder that so many of them feel negatively about AI.

The biggest shift for workers will happen when AI provides nearly error-free work. At that point, it will be able to function on its own without a human checking in on it, and companies will have every economic incentive to let it.

This will lead to a fundamental change in how we think about work, income, and economic security. How will an economy that's been built around employment operate if fewer people are working, or if many people are working fewer hours?

In a capitalist society, employment is the way most people get the money they need to pay for the basics of life as well as being a key source of dignity and social connection.

When a community has high unemployment, the ripple effects can be pervasive. Research suggests that in some parts of the United States, factory closures contribute to a rise in deaths from opioid overdoses. Now imagine similar pressures on both white-collar and blue-collar workers nationwide.

We have to think now about how to reduce job losses so that everyone can share in the prosperity that AI creates. Waiting until people are already displaced or underemployed will be too late. AI is a structural challenge to the way our economy is organized, and it requires thinking and action now.

AI will empower people (and perhaps AIs) to do more harm.

Long before AI entered the mainstream, there was information online about how to create weapons like bombs, bioweapons, even computer viruses. AI will make it much easier to not only get this information but act on it. Even criminals with very limited skills will be able to target victims at every scale: individuals, companies, and governments.

AI-enabled fraud, disinformation, deepfakes, and surveillance are the harms that many people will feel most keenly in their everyday lives.

AI capabilities are starting to be used for cyberattacks. The smartest cybersecurity experts I know are scared about the next few years, because the attackers are getting powerful new capabilities faster than the defenders can fix all the weaknesses. After all, the same AI model that can find a flaw in software so a company can fix it can also help a criminal exploit it. The resources needed to make an attack are going down significantly and we haven't been able to separate those abilities from benign usage.

Think about the infrastructure that will be vulnerable: hospitals, financial institutions, water systems, power grids, systems for managing government benefits. When these institutions are attacked, it's the patients, customers, and benefits recipients who stand to lose.

The same goes for bioterrorism. Although AI will lead to lifesaving advances in drugs and vaccines, it will also make it easier to design a deadly new disease. Again, the positive capabilities are hard to separate from the dangerous ones. This is a global problem.

The risks I've just mentioned are all about how AI will empower bad actors who have relatively little power now. The same tools will also concentrate power in places where it already exists. Autonomous weapons, for example, will make governments even more capable of using deadly force without a human being part of the decision. Monitoring and manipulating public opinion will be easier and cheaper, and more effective too.

Eventually, the power to use AI to harm people will not be limited to people or institutions. AI systems themselves already occasionally act in ways their designers didn't intend. The technology is improving faster than anyone expected and in surprising ways, and as the models become more powerful, they could begin to act against our interests and we could lose control. I'll have more to say about this in the future.

AI could stunt our kids' development and replace human relationships.

When I was growing up in Seattle, I didn't have that many friends aside from a few other boys who were like me. It took hard work and a lot of help from my mom to develop my social skills so I could relate to different kinds of people. I still draw on those lessons today at the age of 70.

I doubt I would have put in the same work if I had had an AI companion back then. They talk to you in ways you're already comfortable with. They don't push you outside your comfort zone. They are always available and never get mad at you. This gives them the potential to become highly addictive and to rob us of the lessons we learn from connecting with other people.

The body of evidence on this subject is still small and a bit mixed, but there are signs that we should be very concerned. For example, in one study of more than 1,100 people who use AI companions, researchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon found that those with smaller social networks were the most likely to turn to a chatbot for companionship. And the heavier and more emotionally personal that use became, the worse they felt.

Young people could be affected for their entire lives. In his book The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt makes an observation about the effect of social media that is even more true for AI: "Like young trees exposed to wind, children who are routinely exposed to small risks grow up to become adults who can handle much larger risks without panicking. Conversely, children who are raised in a protected greenhouse sometimes become incapacitated by anxiety before they reach maturity."

An AI companion designed to never upset you is a big, protected greenhouse.

We are only beginning to understand the dangers that the internet—especially social media—can pose to young people's development. We're seeing compulsive use, disrupted sleep, cyberbullying, and exposure to harmful content. AI could magnify many of these risks by making them more persuasive and difficult to escape, and we should not wait another generation to start taking them seriously. Countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, and Norway are adopting protections for children online. China has gone the furthest. Its rules restrict AI companion apps broadly, bar designs that foster emotional dependence, and ban virtual relatives and romantic partners for minors.

I'm also worried about AI's impact on education. Ironically, the same tool that will allow people to learn more than ever could also lead to many people learning less. One preliminary survey suggested that heavier AI use was associated with less critical thinking. The effect was stronger for younger people.

This would be the worst possible time for humans to lose their critical thinking skills. In an era of deepfakes and misinformation that can be tailored to you individually, the ability to tell what is true from what is not becomes an essential life skill.

It's unclear where to draw the line on these psychosocial problems. In some cases, AI may help people understand how to do better in their human relationships. It may be the only contact with the outside world for isolated elderly people and people with limited mobility, and it will be better than nothing. Wherever we end up drawing the line, it should be our decision, made intentionally.

The good things we do with AI could be very, very good.

It's often said that we overestimate how much will change in the short term and underestimate how much will change in the long term.

With AI, I see something different going on. Some people see only the upside of AI and do not focus enough on the negatives. Others make the opposite mistake, which is to focus exclusively on the dangers—which are real—at the cost of missing the potential benefits.

We need both: deep concern about the AI harms we need to minimize, and grounded optimism about the positives if we maximize them for everyone.

Maximizing the benefits is just as important as minimizing the harms. If people see how AI makes their lives easier, it will help build the public trust that is necessary for managing the harder parts of the transition. If the first thing AI does in most people's lives is take away their job, those who are already skeptical about it will outright reject it. This will make it harder to ever deliver on the benefits and it is another reason why governments, industries including the medical industry, and AI companies should be working together now.

With its ability to synthesize knowledge from every scientific field, AI can accelerate innovation in the world's toughest technical challenges: providing reliable clean energy for everyone, combating climate change, growing enough food, eradicating diseases, and more. Researchers working on cancer treatments or nuclear energy can use AI to search through massive amounts of scientific literature. It can help them identify patterns that a human might miss and decide which experiments offer the most promise. When intelligence is no longer the limiting factor that it is today, smaller companies will be able to compete with organizations that have far larger research budgets. R&D and innovation will be supercharged.

Healthcare is one area where AI can help solve real-world problems. Many small American hospitals lack on-site specialists who can quickly diagnose a patient during a life-threatening emergency. In those places, AI could make sure a heart attack is caught in time and a family avoids the crushing expense of a medical emergency. Viz.ai is one example. It analyzes scans to detect strokes and other emergencies and helps medical teams coordinate their patients' care. It is being used in nearly 2,000 U.S. hospitals.

AI will also help primary-care doctors make better diagnoses and keep in touch with their patients when they're not in the clinic. It will help patients understand test results and complicated schedules for taking their medicine.

I surprise a lot of people when I tell them that a second area—agriculture—is where I see the fastest impact of AI in low-income countries. In most low-income countries, farmers don't get reliable weather forecasts or advice on what seeds to plant, how to protect their crops and livestock from disease, or how to improve their soil. With population growth in these countries and the challenges of climate change, these farmers need more help than ever. Using AI, low-income farmers will soon be able to get better advice about all these things than even the richest farmers get today and increase their output substantially.

Government services are a third area where AI can make people's lives easier. In the United States, I've met families who, understandably, were overwhelmed by the process of applying for health insurance, student aid, or food assistance. Faced with a huge stack of complicated bureaucratic forms, many felt like giving up. AI can streamline things dramatically so they get the help they need faster and the government can operate more efficiently. Governments can make the citizen's experience far better, starting with those who need its safety net services the most.

Despite my concerns about its impact on our mental health, I think AI can also help a lot there. Most communities have too few counselors, psychiatrists, and addiction specialists. With the right privacy safeguards in place, AI tools could help people recognize warning signs. Then, if needed, they can offer evidence-based coping strategies and team up with a human to provide more responsive treatment.

AI can be a boon for education as well, despite the concerns I mentioned earlier. It can free teachers up to spend more time working with students one on one or in small groups and give them a clearer view of where the whole class is struggling. For students, an AI tool that preserves what researchers call "productive struggle"—the cognitive work that builds understanding—can strengthen learning. When a student first encounters a new idea, the AI gives substantive explanations and offers both questions and answers. Later, when it's checking their comprehension, it holds the answer back and helps them arrive at it on their own.

Taken together, the advances in all these areas could make everyday life easier, more affordable, and less constrained by a person's income or connections.

AI could give individuals and small businesses access to capabilities that today require expensive professional help or large staffs, while making products and services better and cheaper. It could help people with disabilities live more independently and enable workers and entrepreneurs with good ideas to accomplish far more than they can today.

Most importantly, it could give people back some of the time and attention now consumed by paperwork, bureaucracy, searching for reliable information, and tasks they cannot afford to pay someone else to handle. These benefits may seem modest, but multiplied across millions of lives, they would be profound: more people getting good advice when they need it and having greater freedom to focus on the lives they want to build.

In all these areas, the operative word is "can"—AI can improve life for people at every income level. But it won't do that automatically. As with any new technology, we have to be deliberate about ensuring that it benefits everyone and not just a wealthy few. This will require governments and philanthropy to play a strong role so that less wealthy citizens and low-income countries are full beneficiaries.

The Gates Foundation has 19 years left of the 20 years in which it will spend its remaining $200 billion. AI will help it achieve its ambitious goals by both accelerating the discovery of vaccines and medicines for HIV, TB, malaria, and malnutrition and helping the healthcare workforce and patients know how to use those tools. The foundation's goals include cutting the number of children who die every year in half again, as was done from 2000 to 2024. All of our work, not just health but also agriculture and education, will take full advantage of AI.

I will write much more about these efforts next month in the foundation's annual Goalkeepers report—including our focus on making sure that AI models are available in the languages spoken by people in all the countries where we support work, and not just the ones that are common in rich and middle-income countries. Many of the leading AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft, are partnering with the foundation on all of these initiatives, which is making a big difference.

The world needs a plan.

It is great that some AI companies are proposing solutions to challenges raised by their own technology, but we should not expect them to lead the charge. Some of the issues are outside their area of expertise, and in a democratic society it's not their role to decide these things.

Instead, solutions should be developed through a public democratic process that includes elected officials, policymakers, educators, health workers, local officials, and community leaders. Millions of people will have their lives disrupted, and we'll need a stronger, more flexible social safety net to help them manage the transition. Local communities are already raising concerns about the energy and water needed for data centers. Without solutions, some groups will push for stopping AI development and deployment altogether.

The solutions should be shaped by our answers to the profound questions raised by AI, including how we preserve our humanity in a time when machines can out-think us. As people who spend their lives thinking about what it means to be human, religious leaders can play a key role in this. I was fascinated by Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on AI, "On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence." It lays a strong foundation for the work that needs to be done.

In the coming months, I will share more ideas for making sure that AI's benefits outweigh the harm it causes. Here are three to start, beginning with what I think is the most important one.

Build a new system for managing the transition.

The highest priority is a monumental task: creating a domestic and international framework for dealing with AI.

None of our current institutions were designed to handle a technology that spreads so fast and touches so many parts of our lives. So we'll need to make new ones.

It's hard to overstate what an enormous undertaking this will be. After the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. government went through its biggest reorganization since World War II for the purpose of improving just one function, national security.

AI will require much, much more. It will affect national security as well as employment, education, taxation, energy, elections, air and water, public health, the financial system, law enforcement, transportation, public lands, and IT systems.

These sectors overlap in ways our existing bureaucracy is not designed to manage. A labor department may understand workforce disruption but not security risk. A business regulator may understand market concentration but not AI's effects on children and teenagers. Left to themselves, institutions will see only one part of the system, while the consequences of AI will ripple across the entire system.

At the national level, countries will need bodies that can set priorities across government agencies. The goal will be to make sure that every risk is accounted for. Otherwise, an AI-enabled attack might succeed because no one thought it was their job to stop it.

But even a country that gets its own house in order will still be exposed to risks that cross borders. This is why an international organization will need to be built in parallel.

It will be unlike any other institution we have ever created, though it can follow the model of some existing systems. There's an inspections regime for nuclear weapons, regulations for international aviation, and agreements that protect the ozone layer. A new global organization for AI will need elements of all three and more.

It is fair to wonder whether the world's institutions are up to the task of designing and implementing this new architecture. Government moves slowly when it moves at all, and polarization within and between countries makes it harder than ever to get things done. Some cooperation between the U.S. and China will be required.

We do not have the luxury of moving slowly. The place to start is with a process for building the right institutions before the disruption forces governments into crisis mode. National leaders should convene economists, technologists, labor experts, business leaders, and workers themselves regularly to identify where existing institutions are failing and what new authorities may be needed. Countries will need to learn from each other.

And the countries that host the leading AI developers and control critical parts of the supply chain should begin meeting now to set up shared norms, before competitive pressure makes it harder for them to cooperate.

Building the framework I'm talking about will take years, which is why we need to start now.

Set aside some jobs for humans.

My dad died of Alzheimer's in 2020. In the later stages of his illness, he was cared for day and night by paid caregivers who understood him even when he struggled to express himself. He couldn't always tell them when he was hungry, but they always knew.

My family and I will always be grateful to that amazing group of professionals. Something in the care they gave my dad was irreplaceably human. No robot could or should have done it.

I think about that team when the question of which jobs will disappear and which will remain comes up. I believe that as AI and robots improve, we'll set aside certain things for only people to do. I've started calling this domain Human Reserved, and it's an example of the kinds of ideas we'll need to consider.

I like the phrase Human Reserved because it makes me think of nature reserves—places where we could put buildings and roads, but we choose not to because the loss would be too great.

We might set something aside as Human Reserved for economic reasons. For example, we may do it because allowing machines to take over a certain role will displace a large number of people who can't easily change jobs. You can't tell a 55-year-old who has worked in construction their whole career that they need to go work at an elder care facility and expect them to find it fulfilling.

Sometimes the decision to make something Human Reserved will be driven by other factors. In health, for example, imagine a robot giving you the awful news that you have an incurable disease. There's no technical reason why it couldn't. Yet it shouldn't.

The Human Reserved domain will evolve over time—for example, we should consider setting aside some jobs now and phasing in AI slowly over years or decades with a commitment to preserve some jobs. Some areas, like education and mental health care, will be a mix, with a human in charge who's using the technology to extend what they can do.

The lines will also vary from place to place. Some countries might insist on having humans take care of the elderly. But a country like Japan, which has a shrinking workforce and not enough young people to care for the old, may welcome a caregiving robot.

The idea of Human Reserved raises a host of questions I don't have answers to. Who gets to decide what we reserve for humans? What criteria should we use? How do you keep companies from cheating and using robots anyway? What happens to international trade when one country lets robots make something and another country doesn't? These will need to be worked out in public as part of the transition plan.

Rebalance how we tax labor and capital.

As workers are pushed into different jobs, they will need retraining and other support from the social safety net. But they will be working less, which means they will be paying less in income taxes, and government revenues will drop just when the demand for those services is greatest. The funds will have to come from somewhere at a time when budgets are stretched.

I believe we should tax AI tokens and robots. Right now, if you're an employer and you hire someone, you pay payroll taxes on their earnings. But if you buy a robot, you can usually write it off right away as a business expense. The tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines.

A tax would slow the rush away from human labor a little and raise money for retraining and a stronger safety net. It would need to be targeted so it does not slow down the purely beneficial uses of AI, like making medicine and education cheaper.

Critics of this idea point out that it's not optimally efficient in an economic sense, but they're not considering the broader value of work for individuals and society. And with all the accelerated innovation we will have, we'll be able to afford a little inefficiency as the price for keeping people employed.

I proposed a robot tax years ago and most of the reaction was that it was a strange idea. I'm still a big proponent of it. Although it is not the whole solution to the threat of AI, it is part of a wise response.

However we raise money for more assistance, it needs to reach the people who need it most, including workers who lose their jobs to AI and robots, people whose hours or wages decline, and communities where the losses are concentrated. We need to start doing that work now so that the systems are ready when the need becomes acute.

What I'm doing.

I will use my voice and time to get AI and equity higher on the public agenda. I will raise the issue with lawmakers every time I visit Washington, D.C., and when I meet with leaders around the world. It will be front and center in my conversations with the people who are developing AI models. I will advocate for the national and international framework I described earlier. The Gates Foundation will help drive beneficial usage, including in Africa. Breakthrough Energy, a company I founded, will use AI to help companies develop cheap clean energy and help solve the climate problem. I will also be writing about AI on a regular basis.

My message to leaders is:

You have a chance to act now, before unemployment rises sharply, communities are hurting, and public trust has eroded. You can make sure that your government handles the problem holistically, rather than divvying it up into multiple bureaucratic fiefdoms. You can make sure AI benefits everyone. And you can work with other governments to meet this national and global challenge.

Finally, I will try to widen the circle of people shaping this debate. It should include workers, college students who are about to enter the workforce, community leaders, religious leaders and faith-based organizations, parents, educators, and others whose voices often aren't heard but who have insight into how the transition will affect people's lives.

How do we ensure that the benefits of AI reach people who do not already have wealth, influence, and access?

How do we strengthen the social safety net and help workers and communities thrive even when they're displaced?

How should public institutions adapt?

And how do we preserve our humanity through all of this?

This unprecedented technology demands an unprecedented global response. If we get it right, the payoff for humanity will be phenomenal and the world will be a more equitable place.

I rarely stop thinking about AI—not because I have all the answers, but because the questions it raises are too consequential to leave to a small group of technologists. Leaders across academia, business, government, and civil society all have a role to play in shaping what comes next.

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*Source: GatesNotes — https://www.gatesnotes.com/The-turbulent-AI-era-is-here*