“Hire The Robot, Fire The Human”: Gates’ Warning, Then Microsoft Buyouts

“The incentive structure is wrong. It’s ‘hire the robot, fire the human and don’t look back’,” Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said in an interview published in The Observer on Sunday. Ironically, on Monday Microsoft announced buyouts to about 60,000 employees, roughly a quarter of its workforce, across the US, Canada, the UK and India.

To be sure Gates no longer holds an official executive or board role at Microsoft.

Watch our quick take:

Gates’ Warning 

Bill Gates calls the AI age an “evolutionary event,” where humans are no longer the smartest things on the planet. He expects AI to take over almost all work skills, starting with white-collar jobs, followed by blue collar jobs and physical labour.

And Gates’ bigger worry is that fewer workers would mean less tax money. In his words, the safety net will shrink “even though overall prosperity gets better.”
He…