Feature · AI and jobs

Bill Gates says firms 'hire the robot, fire the human' — yet 16% of workers replaced by AI were asked to come back

"My coding skills, which I'd been obsessed with since I was 13, became essentially useless." Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said that in an Observer interview published Oct 25. The same weekend, Wall Street and HR research produced numbers pointing another way: AI has paid off nothing outside tech, and plenty of companies that replaced people with AI are calling them back. We checked how far Gates's warning holds up.

1. 'Hire the robot, fire the human and don't look back'

   In an exclusive Observer interview, Gates said people will keep losing jobs to AI because "the incentive structure is wrong: it's 'hire the robot, fire the human and don't look back'." He called the AI age an "evolutionary event" in which humans are no longer the most intelligent things on the planet, and predicted that invention and white-collar skills, then physical labor via humanoids, will be replaced.

2. 'My coding skills became essentially useless'

   According to JoongAng Ilbo, Gates said he realized late last year that the coding skills he had obsessed over since age 13 had become essentially useless, and that humans can no longer be the world's best coders. On the Decoder podcast the same day he called the next 20 years potentially the most chaotic in human history. His remedies: a 'token tax' on AI use and higher taxes on the rich — he said he paid $14 billion in tax over his life but would have paid $40 billion.

3. Yet outside tech, the payoff is zero

   Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok wrote on Oct 25 that "the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech." Business Insider reported that tech firms' revenue per employee rose from $550,000 in 2022 to nearly $800,000, while the rest of the S&P 500 has sat around $550,000 for seven years, with margins stuck near 10%. Mainstream companies, Slok said, are starting to see token spending "as a cost center that weighs on margins."

4. 16% fired and rehired: 'automate first, understand the work second'

   In an SHL survey of 2,036 U.S. and U.K. workers, 16% said they had been replaced by AI and later asked back by the same employer — 19% in the U.S. and 24% among 18- to 24-year-olds. SHL calls it 'AI rebounding,' The Globe and Mail reported: "The pattern we see is automate first, understand the work second. That's backwards." To return, 51% would want a significant raise and 42% written job-security guarantees.

5. Goldman: AI-exposed industries hired 10,000 fewer than trend

   Goldman Sachs economist Joseph Briggs wrote on Oct 22 that employment in the industries most exposed to AI ran about 10,000 jobs below trend over the past three months, though AI-related construction hiring largely offset it and the effect is smaller than feared earlier this year. Only 23% of U.S. establishments use AI in regular workflows; if AI lifts productivity 15%, about 9% of workers could be temporarily displaced.

6. 'Pure people managers won't survive'

   Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky named two types of people who won't make the shift to AI: "pure people managers" and people who are rigid and won't change, Fortune reported. "You can't just be these managers where you're people's therapists, and you're just doing meetings," he said, arguing bosses must become hybrid manager-ICs close to the work.

7. In Korea, 94% of lost youth jobs were in AI-exposed industries

   Korea's numbers point the same way. MBC News reported on Oct 25 that total employment rose by 110,000 last month while youth employment fell by nearly 150,000, and that 94% of youth jobs lost over the past four years were in AI-exposed industries. A working developer said juniors used to learn from their mistakes, but AI now solves problems for them, shrinking the chance to build skills.

8. The pushback: 'like saying electricity has zero payoff outside utilities'

   The skeptics have critics too. Under an X post on the Apollo report (256,000 views), a reply comparing it to "suggesting electricity has zero payoff outside of utilities" drew 1,300 likes. An investor in several small businesses said AI saved considerable money through translation, advertising legal advice and automation, reducing part-time hiring. SHL itself says replacing people with AI cuts this year's costs, but elevating people with AI is how companies grow.