Concerns over Big Tech have flown under the radar for years.
Now more people are beginning to pay attention.
And Bill Gates made one prediction that will send a chill down your spine.
Bill Gates on AI
Creative destruction has forever been a natural process in society.
For example, the personal computer eventually made the typewriter obsolete.
Technological innovation has collapsed entire industries, but the argument was that those displaced workers would find work in another sector of the economy, which would lead to higher productivity and even more jobs.
That has been true, although it has led to turmoil in the short term for displaced workers.
However, artificial intelligence could be the “black swan” event that nobody saw coming.
AI could make humans more productive, but the concern is that it could displace too many workers permanently.
And Microsoft founder Bill Gates believes that AI will replace doctors and most other professions in ten years.
During a recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Gates said that humans would no longer be needed “for most things.”
Gates added that “with AI, over the next decade, that will become free, commonplace — great medical advice, great tutoring.”
In a subsequent conversation with Harvard professor Arthur Brooks, Gates expanded his thoughts on AI and declared, “It’s very profound and even a little bit scary—because it’s happening very quickly, and there is no upper bound.”
The future of work
The debate over AI is only beginning.
For example, there are concerns over copyright.
AI platforms are being trained on copyrighted material, so the originators of that material feel as though they should be compensated.
There are also philosophical concerns about human purpose if machines can do every job.
But the most immediate issue regards how AI could destabilize the workforce.
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman argued in his 2023 book The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century’s Greatest Dilemma that AI “will be hugely destabilizing for hundreds of millions who will, at the very least, need to re-skill and transition to new types of work. . .These tools will only temporarily augment human intelligence. . .They will make us smarter and more efficient for a time, and will unlock enormous amounts of economic growth, but they are fundamentally labor replacing.”
CNBC reported that “Artificial intelligence will create 78 million more positions than it eliminates by 2030, and the future of work will revolve around collaboration between humans and machines, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 predicted earlier this month. But even AI optimists agree that huge changes in how people work are likely to result in a period of dramatic transition. New jobs enabled by AI’s advances won’t come soon enough to rescue large portions of the global workforce, Suleyman predicted in his book.”
Nobody knows for certain the future of AI.
But debates over AI need to happen so people won’t be blindsided by the potential pitfalls – such as the censorship implications of “model collapse,” whereby models see performance deteriorate over time as they train on more and more AI-generated content – of this emerging technology.
Quite simply, there’s a non-zero risk of AI use becoming a backdoor censorship means if establishment outlets and the tech giants who control internet revenue are able to corner – or otherwise harvest – the human-generated content needed to train models. If they are, it may be inevitable that they will exert a near-total influence monopoly over public debate.
Stay tuned to Unmuzzled News for any updates to this ongoing story.
