Bill Gates reckons only four jobs will survive AI, with Microsoft offering voluntary severance packages to more than a quarter of its workforce.
Microsoft, who made just $133.75 billion profit last year (a 31% increase from the previous year) has more than 220,000 workers across the world, with around 6,000 in the UK.
And some 60,000 members of staff will be offered packages for voluntarily leaving, according to a blog post leaked by Business Insider.
“This (buyout) offer will be available to eligible employees in participating teams in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States at level 70 and below,” Microsoft said.
The company’s chief people officer Amy Coleman added: “This is a time-limited, voluntary program that gives those who are eligible the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources.
“Eligible employees will receive an email with a link to their Voluntary Exit Offer details within the next few hours.”
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and International Labour Organization (ILO) note that roughly 40% to 60% of jobs in advanced economies have high exposure to AI integration (Getty Stock Images)
Now, the billionaire software developer, 70, previously said that only coders, biologists, energy workers, and professional athletes will survive the AI takeover.
Speaking on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, Gates said: “You know, like baseball. We won’t want to watch computers play baseball.”
When asked if ‘will we still need humans?’ he replied: “Not for most things – we’ll decide.
“So there’ll be some things that we reserve for ourselves, but in terms of making things and moving things, and growing food, over time, those will be basically solved problems.”
Gates thinks athletes are AI-proof (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Elon Musk, meanwhile, thinks that there will be at least one billion robots within the next decade, and that they will be more productive than the whole of humanity.
“So it starts off very slowly but then grows at an explosive rate,” the SpaceX founder told the 2026 G20 summit in North Carolina.
“10 years from now, I would say there are well over a billion humanoid robots. The productivity per robot will be probably five times that of a human.”
Last year, Microsoft released a list of the 40 jobs most at risk of being taken over by AI.
The caveat is that the list shows how good AI is at performing challenging tasks within occupations, rather than being able to perform the whole job on their own.
Top 40 most exposed jobs to AI
- Interpreters and translators — 98%
- Historians — 91%
- Mathematicians — 91%
- Proofreaders — 91%
- Automatic machine coders — 90%
- Writers and authors — 85%
- Statistical assistants — 85%
- Sales representatives — 84%
- Technical writers — 83%
- Journalists — 81%
- Passenger attendants — 80%
- Telephone operators — 80%
- Editors — 78%
- Farm and home management educators — 77%
- Political scientists — 77%
- Data scientists — 77%
- Geographers — 77%
- Announcers and radio DJs — 74%
- Brokerage clerks — 74%
- Web developers — 73%
- Customer service representatives — 72%
- New accounts clerks — 72%
- Ticket agents and travel clerks — 71%
- Market research analysts — 71%
- Concierges — 70%
- Business teachers — 70%
- Personal financial advisors — 69%
- Economics teachers — 68%
- Management analysts — 68%
- Switchboard operators — 68%
- Telemarketers — 66%
- Advertising sales agents — 66%
- Archivists — 66%
- Public safety telecommunicators — 66%
- Library science teachers — 65%
- Demonstrators and product promoters — 64%
- Models — 64%
- Public relations specialists — 63%
- Counter and rental clerks — 62%
- Hosts and hostesses — 60%
LADbible Group has contacted Microsoft for comment.