Generative AI is reshaping the world by essentially automating redundant and repetitive tasks to give professionals ample time to focus on more important things. But on the back of that, there’s a rising concern among professionals that this technology will eventually take over their jobs.
For instance, a study revealed that 54% of banking jobs can be automated using AI. It’s unclear if the banking sector will embrace the change, especially with the critical privacy and security issues riddling AI.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates recently predicted that AI would replace humans for most things. However, the philanthropic billionaire indicated that it’d be mostly up to humans how they interact with AI, choosing what to preserve for themselves. He jokingly indicated that no one would like to watch computers playing baseball.
Building on this premise, Gates recently shared more insights about the AI revolution, indicating that AI is gaining broad adoption across organizations, leaving professionals redundant at work.
However, not all hope is lost, at least for three professions greenlit by the billionaire as future-proof in the emerging AI era. According to Gates, coders, energy experts, and biologists are safe from the hostile AI takeover.
Interestingly, over the past few months, I’ve covered multiple reports suggesting that coding might be dead in the water with the rapid prevalence of AI. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discouraged the youth from exploring a career path in software engineering, suggesting they might have better luck in biology, education, manufacturing, or farming.
AI can’t code at human-level yet
While multiple reports and the ever-emerging proprietary AI models suggest coding might be the first profession on AI’s chopping block, Bill Gates says human professionals are essential to the process (via Axios).
OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model has posted great results across various benchmarks, including coding, prompting some users to question the importance of hiring software engineers. As you may remember, Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff recently indicated that the company is “seriously debating” on hiring software engineers in 2025.
It’s apparent that AI can generate code, but Bill Gates says human professionals are still essential for the process, as they’ll help identify and correct errors, refine algorithms, and bolster AI development.
Related: Cursor AI asks users to generate code themselves
Interestingly, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently indicated that AI would eventually replace software engineers, suggesting that there’s an urgent need to master AI tools.
As for biologists, Gates claims argues that AI is great at diagnosing diseases and analyzing DNA but reiterates that the technology lacks the creativity for biological research and scientific discovery.
On the other hand, the billionaire says AI won’t replace energy experts because the field is too complex to be fully automated.
