Bill Gates has raised questions about the limits of artificial intelligence and robotics, drawing from his family’s experience caring for his father during Alzheimer’s disease.
Writing about the debate over jobs that could be replaced by AI or robots, Gates recalled the caregivers who looked after his father around the clock during the later stages of his illness.
“In the later stages of my dad’s Alzheimer’s disease, he was cared for day and night by people who understood him even when he struggled to express himself,” Gates said.
The Microsoft co-founder said his family remained grateful to the caregivers, noting that their work contained a deeply human quality that technology could not replace. “Something in the care they gave my dad was irreplaceably human,” he said.
Gates said the experience continues to shape his thinking whenever the future of work and the replacement of human jobs by machines is discussed.
“I think about them a lot when the discussion of which jobs should or shouldn’t be replaced by AI or robots comes up,” he said.