Bill Gates Highlights Jobs Likely to Survive AI's Global Workforce Impact

Bill Gates, the billionaire and founder of Microsoft, revealed in a podcast with Zerodha's Nikhil Kamath that playing cricket, nurses, and psychiatrists are among the jobs that may withstand the AI revolution.

When asked about the ongoing AI revolution, Bill Gates replied, "I mean, in extreme cases, we're not going to have robots play cricket; that's boring. We'll save that for humans, even if robots could be, you know, far superior. That—that isn't interesting."

Microsoft cut 650 jobs in its Xbox division in September. According to media reports, Amazon laid off employees in several units, including communications, and Apple eliminated approximately 100 roles in its digital services group last year.

"And so, what activities might a country say, "No, we're reserving this" for? We're going to decide whether nurses will be humans or psychiatrists. So we might artificially ignore the fact that machines, uh, can substitute for some of that. It will really get to the heart of human instinct. Yes, we will establish a hierarchy—perhaps not the current one, but another way to separate ourselves," stated Bill Gates.

The Information reported on Friday that Alphabet's Google laid off hundreds of employees in its platforms and devices unit, citing a person with direct knowledge of the situation.

The cuts in the division, which includes the Android platform, Pixel phones, and the Chrome browser, among other applications, follow Google's January buyout offers to unit employees, according to the report.

"Since combining the platforms and devices teams last year, we've focused on becoming more nimble and operating more effectively and this included making some job reductions in addition to the voluntary exit program that we offered in January," a spokesperson for Google told The Information.

Big Tech companies have shifted spending to data centers and AI development, while cutting back on investments in other areas of their operations.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, laid off approximately 5% of its 'lowest performers' in January while continuing to hire machine learning engineers at a rapid pace.

Bloomberg reported in February that Google had laid off employees in its cloud division, but that the cuts affected only a few teams.

In January 2023, Alphabet announced plans to cut 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its global workforce.