Bill Gates says AI is an “evolutionary event,” suggests taxing AI and creating human-only jobs
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, in an exclusive interview with The Observer in the United Kingdom, described the AI era as an “evolutionary event” and said that humans are no longer the smartest species on Earth. He said companies have the wrong incentive structure, which shows up as “hire robots, fire humans, and then never look back.”
Gates predicted that nearly all job skills will be replaced by AI, including “inventive skills, white-collar job skills, and, as humanoid robots develop, human physical-labor skills.” He said candidly that his programming ability, which he had studied since age 13, had basically become obsolete by the end of last year. He advocated taxing AI use, possibly in the form of a token tax, and using the revenue for unemployment protection and retraining; he also said billionaires should pay more tax, and that he has paid about $14 billion over his lifetime, but would be willing to pay $40 billion.
Gates also reiterated the concept of “Human Reserved” jobs: even if AI can technically do them, some jobs should be reserved for humans through law or policy, such as care work and some medical and educational services. He pointed out that while AI brings overall prosperity, tax revenue for the government’s safety net may instead decline, which will test the quality of governments. These views continue the position he set out in a long article in August 2026.
Original sources:
Title: Bill Gates warns the ‘evolutionary’ age of AI will be brutal for workers Publisher: The Observer / Ben Zaranko, James Harding Publication date: 2026-10-25 URL: https://observer.co.uk/news/technology/article/bill-gates-warns-the-evolutionary-age-of-ai-will-be-brutal-for-workers Source type: subject’s original post/interview report Verification: full text read in this session, verification date 2026-10-27 Supporting content: evolutionary event wording, incentive structure quote, token tax, billionaire tax, decline in safety-net revenue
Title: Bill Gates: AI is an evolutionary event Publisher: The Telegraph Publication date: 2026-10-25 URL: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10/25/bill-gates-ai-is-an-evolutionary-event/ Source type: media report Verification: full text read in this session, verification date 2026-10-27 Supporting content: programming skills obsolete, Human Reserved, monkey-to-human analogy, scope of skills replaced
Title: Bill Gates wants to see a robot tax and ‘Human Reserved’ jobs to mitigate harms from AI Publisher: TechCrunch Publication date: 2026-08-26 URL: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/26/bill-gates-wants-to-see-a-robot-tax-and-human-reserved-jobs-to-mitigate-harms-from-ai/ Source type: media report (based on GatesNotes long article) Verification: summary and quotations read in this session, verification date 2026-10-27 Supporting content: origin of the Human Reserved concept, background on robot tax and token tax
ABAB AI Insight
Since 2017, Gates has repeatedly mentioned a robot tax. In August 2026, he formally proposed “Human Reserved” areas in an approximately 6,000-word long article on GatesNotes, and in this Observer interview he has further discussed it publicly. As the founder of Microsoft, his personal experience of programming skills being surpassed by AI gives this stance a stronger personal dimension, rather than being purely an external observation.
The tax proposal targets the current imbalance in incentives: employers pay payroll taxes for human workers, while buying robots or AI services can often be immediately deducted as expenses. A token tax and a robot tax are meant to narrow this gap and fund retraining and the safety net. Human Reserved draws on the logic of nature reserves, deliberately limiting some efficiency in order to preserve human-led jobs such as care work and key medical communication.
Compared with his earlier purely technology-optimistic statements, Gates this time places greater emphasis on policy intervention and the trade-off with efficiency. He also said the United States and China need to view certain AI risks as a common human challenge rather than a national competition. These suggestions are currently only his personal views and have not yet become specific legislative text or bipartisan consensus.
Based on the facts already verified, Gates’s plan seeks to establish a new mechanism between AI-driven wealth growth and the distribution of labor income, but implementation faces unresolved questions such as who defines reserved jobs, cross-border tax competition, and cost pass-through. The key indicator will be whether governments in various countries begin substantive discussions of a token tax or similar mechanisms in the next 1-2 years, and whether Human Reserved enters the formal policy agenda.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
When technological substitution accelerates, the policy focus shifts from the labor tax base to capital/AI.
Actively reserving some human jobs means accepting partial efficiency losses in order to maintain social functions.