Brand new NYT coverage by Karen Weise August 26 is showing us what’s important about the AI revolution – to one IT titan.

Bill Gates sat down with Weise recently for an interview in which he told her the world should be very concerned about AI. In fact, Weise describes Gates as being pretty animated about his predictions, and sort of aghast at how things are playing out, and the responses of both government and business, with a few prominent exceptions.

In taking this position, Gates joins Geoffrey Hinton, also a main innovator, and Dario Amodei. But I’ll get back to that. Weise’s article notes some of the problems that Gates may face in becoming the ambassador of human protections.

First, there’s the way that the Epstein scandal rocked Gates’s world, according to his perceived proximity.

Weise points out that Gates testified about this for a House committee in June.

“He is taking his stand as he emerges from an extended period of scandal,” she writes. “Early this year, the release of the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein’s emails brought renewed attention to Mr. Gates’s interactions with him.”

A quote by Gates in the interview suggests he sees the issue as being basically put to bed.

“I think people understand what I did do, what I didn’t do and that I learn when I make mistakes,” he said.

But concerns may remain in some parts of the public mind. Anyway, that’s one component of how people may receive this news, in the particular moment that we are in.

A much more relevant issue to business, that Weise also lays out, is that Gates himself was the head of Microsoft for so long, and that the company had such an outsized effect on tech, albeit earlier, in the era of the PC.

Gates argues that he is no longer so close to IT, as AI evolves. In fact, the coverage shows how you can see this from two opposite angles: on the one hand, Weise notes, it might be strange that a person warning about AI has been so instrumental in tech; however, seeing it another way, maybe his testimony becomes more valuable and authentic because of his past.

“Mr. Gates conceded that he also might be a flawed messenger simply because of his vast wealth and history as Microsoft’s aggressive chief executive,” Weise writes. “While Mr. Gates avoided criticizing Microsoft or other companies by name, he argued that he was uniquely positioned to work on the A.I. issue. He is a technologist and industry insider who is no longer driven by the profit incentives of running a company, and he has spent decades addressing inequality through his philanthropic foundation.”

Saving Jobs: What’s Actually Going to Happen?

I wanted to include this part of Weise’s writing, because it goes directly to a common-sense concern that I have heard from so many who are close to AI. She writes, first:

“Technological breakthroughs in the past created more jobs than they eliminated, Mr. Gates said. But he is in disbelief that industry boosters say that will happen again this time.”

That’s because AI is so vast. It’s not just going to affect some sectors – it’s going to affect everything.

“He said mass job losses, if not addressed, were inevitable because A.I. would spread across the economy and leave little room for one industry to absorb the refugees from another.”

This is what I often refer to as the “knock-off effect,” where newly jobless persons in one role, say, trucking or cashiering or accounting or writing, make career changes and find that the new job boards are similarly oversaturated with applicants. Aren’t we really seeing this already? And if we were serious about remediating the problem, as a society, wouldn’t there already be changes to the unemployment system, which most would agree is under-resourced?

Weise, citing Gates, added:

“The biggest tech companies in the world, including Microsoft, are racing to help corporate customers adopt A.I., which could replace many workers.”

So the corporate race is on. And this seems to be what bothers Gates himself: that people won’t address the problems, because there’s too much money on the line. Already, we’re talking about an “AI bubble” in which companies have to leverage advantage any way that they can.

This sentence by Weise also made a lot of sense to me:

“Mr. Gates said that companies were just responding to market incentives, but that those incentives might conflict with what was best for society.”

It’s a real Damascus moment for someone who personally made so much money, (so much,) under the invisible hand of the free market, to suddenly become aware that this hand might not always act in the best interests of the people. It makes Gates seem like a real leftist.

Calling for “Human Reserved” jobs, and a “token tax,” Gates seemed willing to promote the U.S. government entertaining certain kinds of wealth transfers, if deliberate and small ones.

As for regulation, Weise writes:

“(Gates) said he would happily debate anyone who argued against mandatory reviews of any A.I. system that could be weaponized to make new molecules and unleash a pandemic. Mr. Gates added that he was dumbfounded by the kind of voluntary measures that the White House and industry leaders were developing.”

“Self-regulation on the most dangerous tool ever invented?” he reportedly said, with emphasis. “No, thanks!”

As for the kerfuffle between Dario Amodei and the Department of Defense, Gates had this to say:

“You have people attacking the person who’s the most open about the downsides,” he said.

That sounds accurate: in the overall landscape here in 2026, Amodei has made a name for himself as the other Cassandra, the one arguing for restraint, and caution.

It’s a good start. I’ve heard some of our best minds give similar warnings about protecting human value in a market wowed and astounded by AI’s capabilities. Let’s stay alert.