Bill Gates: Only 4 professions will withstand the dominance of artificial intelligence

US billionaire and globally renowned businessman and Microsoft founder Bill Gates believes that only four professions will escape the flood of artificial intelligence that has begun to devour jobs, as companies increasingly use AI as a substitute for human employees. Gates previously thought that only three professions would survive AI’s dominance, but he recently added a fourth after becoming convinced that robots cannot perform it. AI is already causing job losses, as companies move toward automation in pursuit of efficiency. In the United Kingdom, for example, a study conducted by Morgan Stanley investment bank, according to Bloomberg, revealed that AI resulted in a net job loss of 8% last year, the highest among major global economies.

Gates recently added a fourth profession to his list, joining the three that may withstand AI, as reported by US media outlets consulted by Al Arabiya Business. According to the Economic Times, earlier this year Gates identified three professions that will remain in demand in the age of automation: programmers, biologists, and energy sector workers. He now also indicated that professional athletes will not be replaced by AI. During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Gates said, “As you know, take baseball as an example; we wouldn’t want to watch computers playing baseball.” He assured Harry Kane that he need not worry, confident that the robot that kicked a child in China would not replace him in the England national team lineup, although that robot might have handled the missed opportunity against Ghana better.

However, when Fallon asked Gates, “Will we still need humans?” he gave a troubling answer: “Not in most things; we will decide that.” Although he later clarified that some activities will still rely on human involvement, they appear to be few in number. He added, “There will be some things we keep for ourselves, but regarding manufacturing, transportation, and food production, these issues will practically become solved problems over time.”

A 2025 study indicated that Microsoft listed 40 jobs as “most at risk” of disappearing due to the rise of AI. The study placed interpreters and editors, historians, mathematicians, proofreaders, machine programmers, writers and authors, statistical assistants, sales representatives, technical writers, and journalists at the top of the list of professions experiencing the highest degree of overlap with AI.