During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Microsoft founder Bill Gates predicted that artificial intelligence will enable people to work just two days a week by 2036. He argued that AI will take over most tasks, though he noted there will still be certain activities — such as watching live baseball — that people will prefer to do for themselves.
“We won’t want to watch computers play baseball,” he quipped.
While pushing his new memoir Source Code, Gates offered a prediction, though it carries a notable caveat: the same company he started has shed 28,000 positions over the past year, with the cuts coming as Microsoft redirected resources toward AI infrastructure.
Gates’s Case for Less Work
Gates positioned the change as a question of intelligence becoming abundant. Appearing on The Tonight Show, he noted that intelligence is presently scarce — a great doctor, a great teacher. He forecast that within the coming decade, that intelligence will become free and widespread.
“Within the next decade, that will become free and commonplace,” he told Fallon.
The logic was pushed into healthcare and education. He pointed to the shortage of doctors and mental health professionals, arguing that AI’s “great medical advice, great tutoring.” could overcome it. The conclusion came next: “Should we, you know, like just work 2 or 3 days a week?”.
Gates said AI will replace humans when it comes to “making things and moving things and growing food.” But there’ll be some things we’ll reserve for us, like live baseball games.
The Job-Cutting Numbers
The prediction arrives alongside a grim record of AI-related layoffs. Programs.com reports that more than 170,000 employees have already been affected by AI-related layoffs in 2026. That’s 13% more than the total number in 2025, and four times the number of AI-related layoffs since 2024.
Most of those layoffs come from big companies with more than 100,000 employees. Accenture, Amazon, Citigroup, Meta, Dell and Microsoft are among those to have announced massive job cuts affecting 10,000+ employees each. In the case of Microsoft, 28,000 workers have been let go in just over a year.
Gates himself admits that the figures raise a question about whether AI is to blame for the cuts.
Experts Push Back
Experts at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) are doubtful about predictions. They say no one can know what will happen next.
On the institute’s site, “While some narrow layoffs may be connected to AI-related automation, others appear driven by a desire to free up cash flow for AI investments or to reduce headcount after pandemic-era over-hiring,” works through a 2026 report.
“Human resource executives say the impacts of AI are more evident in role consolidation and hiring avoidance in roles where AI can automate many tasks,” it adds.
Experts point out that recent graduates confront a harder job market because of improvements in AI technology. They say entry-level positions frequently demand routine research, analysis, and writing duties that AI can now handle for the most part. “Consistent with this intuition is empirical evidence that AI may be dampening demand for new hires,” is their conclusion.
The Skeptics
Not everyone shares Gates’s optimism. Geoffrey Hinton, known as the ‘Godfather of AI,’ has warned of the negative impact that AI could have. He says that “scary” robots can increase the wealth gap and “make society worse.”
“It’s because we live in a capitalist society, and so what’s going to happen is this huge increase in productivity is going to make much more money for the big companies and the rich, and it’s going to increase the gap between the rich and the people who lose their jobs,” he cautioned.
Gates pointed to the darker side of giving people power through AI. “[Sometimes when] you empower humans, it doesn’t always get pushed in the right direction,” he said, speaking to how the technology can distort stories should it wind up in the wrong hands.
A Shorter Work Week Already Exists
A four-day work week is not purely hypothetical. Numerous firms across the globe have put the arrangement into practice.
Bolt, Microsoft Japan, and Kickstarter have all moved to a 4-day workweek as a way of improving the balance between work and personal life, while also boosting productivity. Juliet Schor, a sociologist at Boston College, points to research showing that cutting back on the hours or days spent working can help stop burnout from building up.
‘The results are really stable. It’s not a novelty effect,” she notes. “People are feeling really on top of their work with this new model.”
Gates’s Warnings About AI
The risks have not escaped Gates’ notice. He addressed the danger back in 2023, writing that there’s a possibility AIs could run out of control.
“Could a machine decide that humans are a threat, conclude that its interests are different from ours, or simply stop caring about us?” he pondered. “Possibly, but this problem is no more urgent today than it was before the AI developments of the past few months.”
The pattern persists. Gates views AI as a force for good, yet he acknowledges it can be misused. The cuts at his own company add weight to that admission.
What Gates Says Now
Gates is still enthusiastic about what AI can offer humanity. He views it as a promising advance for people. According to him, once programmers manage to generalize a learning algorithm and put it into operation at computer speeds, it will be capable of accomplishing everything a human mind can achieve — yet without any real limits on how fast or how much it can handle.
| Perspective | View on AI and Work |
|---|---|
| Bill Gates | Predicts 2-day work week by 2036; AI will replace most jobs |
| Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research | Skeptical; cites cash-flow motives and role consolidation |
| Geoffrey Hinton | Warns of increased wealth gap and social harm |
| Juliet Schor | Finds stable evidence of reduced burnout from shorter weeks |
The contrast is striking: Gates is forecasting what AI can accomplish, while the experts are recording what it is already accomplishing — altering roles and hiring practices at some of the largest companies in the world.
The firm owned by Gates itself has demonstrated how AI transforms a workforce. The layoffs serve as a warning that the shift is already happening, and those who stand to lose their positions may not experience the benefits Gates outlines.
He envisions a future where artificial intelligence takes over most jobs, and that vision is already coming to pass, with the consequences showing up in the numbers behind layoffs.
See the video the story is built around at Bored Panda.
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