I’m listening to Bill Gates’s warnings about artificial intelligence. I really am.
But when one of the architects of the digital age tells us the next wave of technology could destroy society, it has a faint one fox warning the chickens about another fox vibe.
That does not make him wrong. It just makes him a particularly complicated messenger.
Gates argues that artificial intelligence is advancing far faster than governments, institutions and communities are preparing for it. Unlike earlier technological changes, AI will not simply replace physical labor or give workers better tools. It may begin replacing large parts of human thinking itself.
That distinction matters.
We have been through waves of technological change before. Machines replaced some physical work. Computers automated administrative tasks. The internet transformed communication, commerce and nearly every profession. Each change eliminated some jobs, created others and forced workers to adapt.
AI may be different because it reaches far beyond repetitive physical or clerical work. It can write, analyze, diagnose, design, translate, program, imitate voices and create images and video. It is moving into law, medicine, customer service, software, manufacturing, construction, hospitality and almost every other part of the economy.
Gates’s concern is that many of the jobs AI eliminates may not come back in another form. New technology has always created new work, but there is no guarantee that it will create enough jobs - or that the new jobs will provide the same income, security, meaning and human connection as the ones that disappear.
That could produce much more than unemployment. It could create extreme inequality, social instability and a growing sense that millions of people are no longer needed.
Work is not only how people earn money. It is also where many people find purpose, identity, friendship and dignity. We should be careful about treating the disappearance of work as an engineering problem that can be solved by sending everyone a check.
Gates identifies three broad dangers.
The first is permanent job displacement. AI could allow a relatively small number of people and corporations to control enormous amounts of productive capacity. Unless we make deliberate choices about ownership, taxation, education and the distribution of wealth, the benefits could flow overwhelmingly to the people who already have the most.
The second danger is the use of AI for fraud, deepfakes, cyberattacks, surveillance and even biological weapons. We are already seeing how easily artificial intelligence can imitate a person’s face or voice, manufacture convincing images and create false information at an industrial scale.
For those of us working in politics and communications, this is not an abstract concern.
We are entering an era in which false information can be created quickly, personalized for different audiences and distributed through fragmented networks that are difficult to monitor. A campaign may no longer confront one misleading television commercial seen by a broad audience. It may confront thousands of different messages, each designed for a narrow group and delivered through sources those people already trust.
The problem is not simply that AI can create better lies. It can create more lies, test them faster and aim them more precisely.
Our institutions are not prepared for that. Neither are most campaigns, news organizations, schools or community groups.
The third danger Gates raises involves children, education and human relationships. He worries that AI companions could become addictive, discourage young people from developing real social skills and weaken critical thinking.
That concern deserves much more attention.
A machine that is always available, always agreeable and designed to hold someone’s attention may be comforting. It may also become a substitute for the difficult human experiences through which people learn empathy, patience, disagreement and emotional resilience.
Children need to learn how to deal with people who do not always tell them what they want to hear. Democracy requires the same skill.
There is also a deeper political danger. At the exact moment when young people may become more dependent on artificial companions and automated information, AI will make personalized propaganda and disinformation more powerful. A system that knows what makes someone angry, anxious, lonely or resentful can use that information to influence not only what they buy, but what they believe.
None of this means we should try to stop artificial intelligence.
AI is here to stay. It can accelerate medical research, improve education, help people with disabilities, make organizations more productive and give individuals access to tools that once belonged only to large institutions. I use it, and I believe people and organizations need to learn how to use it well.
But “AI is here to stay” cannot become an excuse for passivity.
Technology is infrastructure, not strategy. It does not decide how its benefits will be shared, which jobs will be protected, what information people can trust or how children should use it. Those are political and social choices.
Right now, the corporations building AI are moving faster than the governments responsible for regulating it. Schools are trying to develop rules after students have already adopted the technology. Workers are being told to prepare for jobs that may not yet exist. Political campaigns are experimenting with AI while most election laws were written for an entirely different communications system.
As Gates puts it, there is no plan.
That may be the most important part of his warning.
We do not need panic, and we do not need another round of vague promises that the market will eventually work everything out. We need public rules, worker protections, serious investment in education and training, safeguards for children, clear standards for the use of synthetic media and institutions capable of responding to AI-driven fraud and disinformation.
“AI for the first time can replace and even exceed human cognition.” — Bill Gates
We also need to protect the work that only human beings can do.
AI can help us identify and reach people. It cannot make someone trust us. It can generate a message, but it cannot replace the relationship between an organizer and a volunteer, a teacher and a student, a caregiver and a patient, or neighbors trying to solve a problem together.
Those relationships are not inefficiencies waiting to be automated. They are the foundation of a functioning society.
Bill Gates may be a fox warning the chickens about another fox. But the fox may still be right about what is coming toward the henhouse.
The question is whether we spend our time arguing about the messenger - or finally start building a plan.
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The choices we make about AI now are critical | Bill Gates
All true but we need to add AI drones that are already murdering people today in Ukraine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/world/europe/russia-drones-autonomous-ai-kill-ukraine-war.html
How long do we have until some dictator lets AI decide when to fire nuclear weapons?
I think that AI and staring at any screen all day limits our connection to our world and like cigarettes, alcohol, drugs and gambling should be restricted until an individual is at least 18 years old.