Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates speaks during a 50th Anniversary celebration event at Microsoft headquarters, Friday, April 4, 2025, in Redmond, Wash. (AP Photo/Jason Redmond)Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has said that AI-led automation will be a net positive that could free up people to do more meaningful work. But he has also warned about the shift happening too fast.“When you improve productivity, it shouldn’t mean that if you get less productive, that’s bad. And if you get more productive, that’s good. It means you can free up these people to have smaller class size or have longer vacations or to help do more. The question is, if it comes so fast that you don’t have time to adjust to it?” the billionaire philanthropist said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday, July 27.Gates’ remarks come amid growing concerns that rapid adoption of AI tools could displace large segments of the white-collar workforce. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has previously warned that about 50 per cent of white-collar, entry-level jobs will disappear by 2030 due to AI adoption.Blue-collar jobs may not exactly be safe either. “In parallel, when the robotic arms start to be decent, which they’re not today, will start to affect even larger classes of labour,” Gates said.The interview also comes on the heels of a major announcement by US President Donald Trump, whose White House administration unveiled its Silicon Valley-friendly plan to make the US a world leader in AI by primarily rolling back regulation to promote innovation, with the exception of requiring tech companies to eliminate political bias in AI.On the difference between AI and AGI (artificial general intelligence), he said that “people use very different definitions”. According to Gates, AGI will be achieved when AI tools are able to do “a telesales job or support job” in a way that is “cheaper and more accurate than humans are.”Also Read | Bill Gates at Express Adda: We weren’t born to do jobs…'He further said that the rate at which AI was improving surprises him, especially with new features such as Deep Research capabilities. “I have an advantage that I have very smart people I can call up when I get confused about physics. But now I actually use deep research. And then I’ll send that answer to my smart friends and say, ‘hey, did it get it right?’ And most of the time they’re like, ‘oh yeah, you didn’t need me’,” Gates said.Story continues below this adGates also revealed that he is working with Microsoft and OpenAI to “make sure” that AI tools are released in low-income countries “to help with their health and education and agriculture.”When asked about what advice he had for youngsters trying to navigate the challenging job environment in the AI era, Gates said, “The ability to use these tools is both fun and empowering. Embracing AI and tracking it will be very important. That doesn’t guarantee that we’re not going to have a lot of dislocation.”“But I really haven’t changed my ‘be curious, read and use the latest tools’ recommendation for young people,” he added.© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd