By cmlee@insider.com (Lee Chong Ming) on yahoo.com
BILL GATES said AI could solve shortages in two key professions: teaching and medicine. The billionaire said AI would help plug labour gaps, even in blue-collar roles.
He also said AI could make early retirement or shorter workweeks possible.
Bill Gates said the long-standing shortage of doctors and teachers might soon be over because AI would fill the gap.
“AI will come in and provide medical IQ, and there won’t be a shortage,” he said on an episode of the “People by WTF” podcast published Friday.
Long focused on public health, Gates noted that countries such as India and those in Africa continue to face a shortage of medical professionals.
The US also has this issue. A report from the Association of American Medical Colleges last year projected that the US would face a physician shortage of up to 86,000 specialists and primary care doctors by 2036.
“The country needs hundreds of thousands of doctors to provide an equal amount of care to everyone, including minorities, those without medical insurance, and people living in rural areas,” Michael Dill, the organization’s director of workforce studies, told Business Insider last year.
The number of doctors who specialize in geriatric care is also dwindling, even as populations age. Medical professionals told BI in March that the influx of older patients could lead to a quality-of-care crisis.
To ease burnout in the industry, healthcare-focused AI startups have raised billions by pitching themselves as the fix.
Startups including Suki, Zephyr AI, and Tennr say they can lighten workload by automating repetitive tasks such as billing and note-taking, improving diagnosis accuracy, and identifying patients for emerging treatments.
The consulting firm McKinsey estimates that generative AI could boost productivity in healthcare and pharma by up to $370 billion.
Education is headed in the same direction.
In the US, according to federal data released in 2023, 86% of K-12 public schools reported difficulties hiring teachers for the 2023-to-2024 school year. About 45% of public schools said they were understaffed.
In the UK, a London high school started replacing some teachers with AI tools such as ChatGPT last year to help students prep for exams.
The pilot program at David Game College involves 20 students using AI tools for a year in core subjects such as English, math, biology, and computer science.
Despite concerns about students using AI to cheat, educators told BI last year that they were optimistic about generative AI’s potential to save teachers time and improve learning — especially as classrooms become harder to staff.
If AI does the jobs, what’s left for humans?
Gates wasn’t just talking about teachers and doctors. He also said AI was coming for factory workers, construction crews, and hotel cleaners — anyone doing work that required physical skill and time.
“The hands have to be awfully good to do those things. We’ll achieve that,” he said.
Tech giants such as Nvidia are betting big on humanoid robots designed to perform manual tasks, including picking items in warehouses and scrubbing floors. These robots aim to reduce labor costs and boost efficiency.
Gates said the world was heading toward a future where work could be drastically reduced — or at least looks very different from now.
“You can retire early, you can work shorter workweeks,” he said. “It’s going to require almost a philosophical rethink about, ‘OK, how should time be spent?'”
Gates added that he was also grappling with that question. “It’s hard for those of us — in my case, spending almost 70 years in a world of shortage — even to adjust my mind,” he said.
In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological advances could eventually reduce the workweek to just 15 hours.
Nearly a century later, despite major productivity leaps, most people still work about 40 hours weekly.
“I don’t have to work,” Gates said. “I choose to work. Because? Because it’s fun.”
