{"slug": "bill-gates-sounds-alarm-on-ai-fueled-mass-unemployment-bioterrorism-most-tool", "title": "Bill Gates sounds alarm on AI-fueled mass unemployment, bioterrorism: ‘Most dangerous tool ever invented’", "summary": "Bill Gates warned in a 6,000-word essay on his personal website that artificial intelligence could cause mass unemployment, enable bioterrorism, and slip beyond human control, calling AI 'the most dangerous tool ever invented.' Gates, 70, said many jobs in law, customer service, medicine, software, and manufacturing will disappear forever, and accused the tech industry of downplaying the dangers because of financial stakes. He predicted that 'smart' robots will compete with humans in construction and hospitality by the end of the decade, and that without intervention, there will be far fewer good jobs.", "body_md": "# Bill Gates sounds alarm on AI-fueled mass unemployment, bioterrorism: ‘Most dangerous tool ever invented’\n\nSee more of our coverage in your search results.\n\n[Add The New York Post on Google](https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=nypost.com)\n\nBill Gates is warning that artificial intelligence could unleash mass unemployment, enable bioterrorism and[ even slip beyond human control](https://nypost.com/2026/07/26/tech/elon-musk-drops-wild-5-year-prediction-about-ai-and-humanity/) — while accusing the tech industry of downplaying the dangers because too much money is at stake.\n\nThe 70-year-old tech titan sounded an equally dire warning in a nearly [6,000-word essay published on his personal website.](https://www.gatesnotes.com/a-turbulent-ai-era-and-critical-choices-to-make)\n\n“Many jobs will disappear forever,” Gates wrote.\n\nHe said AI will rapidly take on work in law, customer service, medicine, software and manufacturing — and predicted that while some new positions will be created, “without the right policies, there will be far fewer than exist today.”\n\nGates even invoked the Great Depression, when unemployment in the US reached roughly 25% in 1933, while stopping short of predicting AI-driven joblessness would hit that level.\n\n“AI may not reach this level, but its impact will not go away with an economic cycle,” Gates wrote.\n\nUnlike earlier technological shifts, Gates argued,[ AI can replace human cognition](https://nypost.com/2026/02/07/us-news/ai-armageddon-bots-eye-2047-as-rise-of-machines-end-of-humanity/) itself — leaving fewer industries available to absorb workers displaced elsewhere.\n\nThe biggest labor shock will come when AI can perform nearly error-free work without a human checking it, he wrote.\n\nAt that point, companies will have every economic incentive to hand more work to machines, he said.\n\n“How will an economy that’s been built around employment operate if fewer people are working, or if many people are working fewer hours?” Gates wrote.\n\nEntry- and mid-level jobs face the most immediate threat, according to Gates.\n\nGates predicted that increasingly capable “smart” robots will begin competing with humans on some physical tasks in construction and hospitality by the end of the decade.\n\nThat could ignite an automation arms race in which companies that replace workers cut their prices, pressuring rivals to do the same.\n\n“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,” Gates wrote.\n\nThe Microsoft co-founder said [mass job loss is inevitable](https://nypost.com/2026/02/25/business/tech-stocks-shake-off-panic-over-ai-doomsday-scenario-where-unemployment-hits-10/) without intervention as AI — which he called “the most dangerous tool ever invented” — spreads across the economy.\n\nThe coming upheaval is “utterly, absolutely, completely, totally different” from previous technological revolutions, [Gates told the New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/technology/bill-gates-ai-risks.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8VA.L9xT.IGYibc2KD95a&smid=url-share) in an article published Wednesday.\n\n[Gates ](https://nypost.com/2026/05/31/us-news/bill-gates-plotted-to-look-like-mr-rogers-report/)said he is “staking everything I know” on his belief that AI will break with centuries of technological progress by destroying jobs without creating enough new ones to replace them.\n\nHe told the Times that recent advances have stunned him, particularly Anthropic’s Claude Code.\n\nCoding is the field Gates said he knows best, making the software’s abilities especially jarring.\n\n“The idea that now these things are in a meaningful sense better than I am is like: What the hell?” Gates told the Times.\n\nGates also accused the technology industry of privately recognizing how serious the dangers are while publicly soft-pedaling them — in spite of occasional dire warnings from the likes of [Anthropic’s Dario Amodei](https://nypost.com/2025/05/31/business/ceo-warns-ai-could-wipe-out-1-in-2-white-collar-jobs-in-next-five-years/) and [OpenAI’s Sam Altman.](https://nypost.com/2023/06/05/sam-altman-who-warned-ai-poses-risk-of-extinction-to-humanity-is-also-a-doomsday-prepper/)\n\n“In private, people who understand how good this stuff is, and how much better it’s getting, they’re very worried,” Gates told the Times.\n\nHe said tech executives discourage one another from sounding the alarm because of the vast sums of money pouring into AI.\n\n“They’re now saying to each other: ‘Hey, man, don’t say that. It’s bad for us — the next trillion dollars we’re trying to raise’,” Gates told the newspaper.\n\nThe dangers Gates sees extend far beyond jobs.\n\nHe warned in his essay that AI could dramatically lower the expertise and resources needed to carry out cyberattacks, fraud and other crimes — and make it easier to design a deadly new disease.\n\nAI could also make hospitals, financial institutions, water systems, power grids and government-benefit systems easier to attack, he wrote.\n\nGates told the Times he supports mandatory reviews of AI systems capable of being weaponized to create new molecules and potentially unleash a pandemic.\n\n“Self-regulation on the most dangerous tool ever invented?” Gates told the Times. “No, thanks!”\n\nIn the Times interview, Gates acknowledged that his past dealings with late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have damaged his standing, calling them “mistakes” of his own making as he tries to return to public life.\n\nHe said he believes that after answering questions for six hours before the House Oversight Committee in June, “people understand what I did do, what I didn’t do and that I learn when I make mistakes.”\n\nGates’ relationship with Epstein became a flashpoint in his marriage to Melinda French Gates, who said in 2022 that she “did not like” her then-husband’s meetings with Epstein. The divorce followed a broader collapse of trust rather than any single incident, according to Gates.\n\nHe has acknowledged an extramarital affair during the marriage and repeatedly called meeting Epstein a serious mistake.\n\nMore recently, [he told congressional investigators that Epstein knew](https://nypost.com/2026/06/10/us-news/bill-gates-arrives-on-capitol-hill-for-closed-door-jeffrey-epstein-interview/) about three affairs and unsuccessfully tried to use that information to pressure him into renewing their relationship, according to the Wall Street Journal.\n\nGates has denied criminal involvement with Epstein, and an outside review commissioned by the Gates Foundation found interactions with Epstein between 2011 and 2014 but no evidence that the foundation paid him or participated in his crimes.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bill-gates-sounds-alarm-on-ai-fueled-mass-unemployment-bioterrorism-most-tool", "canonical_source": "https://nypost.com/2026/08/26/business/bill-gates-sounds-alarm-on-ai-fueled-mass-unemployment-bioterrorism-most-dangerous-tool-ever-invented/", "published_at": "2026-08-26 15:00:39+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-26 15:16:00.804506+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-safety", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics", "ai-agents"], "entities": ["Bill Gates", "Microsoft", "Anthropic", "Claude Code", "Dario Amodei", "New York Times", "New York Post"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bill-gates-sounds-alarm-on-ai-fueled-mass-unemployment-bioterrorism-most-tool", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bill-gates-sounds-alarm-on-ai-fueled-mass-unemployment-bioterrorism-most-tool.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bill-gates-sounds-alarm-on-ai-fueled-mass-unemployment-bioterrorism-most-tool.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/bill-gates-sounds-alarm-on-ai-fueled-mass-unemployment-bioterrorism-most-tool.jsonld"}}