AI will target white-collar work: Gates Patti Smith Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has predicted rapid developments in the capability of artificial intelligence programs, such as highprofile tool ChatG PT, will dramatically change the way people source information online, and warned whitecollar job losses will inevitably result from its use. Speaking to The Australian Financial Review after an event at the Lowy Institute in Sydney yesterday, the technology pioneer said he had been experimenting with generative Al programs a lot over the last year, and saw huge potential benets for health and education. Microsoft is already an investor in UpenAl, the company behind the {EFT3.5 language system that ChatGPT is based on, as well as DaliE, which generates images from text prompts, and is in discussions to invest as much as $U81t] billion {$14.3 billion.) It has been suggested that generative Al could blow open the internet search market that has long been dominated by Google, with US reports saying Google's cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Etrin had recently been called back in out of semiretirement to hold emergency meetings about how to incorporate chatbots in its search pages. "I think about it a lot, as I'm an adviser to Microsoft where Satya Nadella is doing a great job,\" Mr Gates said. "He has made sure the company has engaged both internally and through partnerships like the one they have with GpenAl, and he draws on my thinking, which goes back a long, long way. \"The way it can help you look through and summarise documents is great and if you compare what the dialogue with His will be over the next two or three years about things like planning a trip, with the current experience on a search engine, it is dramatically better." The topic of Al advancement has long been associated with broader societal concerns that more intelligent automation will play havoc with the job market, and Mr Gates did not shy away from a likely reality, where knowledgebased whitecollar jobs will go as a result of the greater sophistication of Al. A recent spate of job losses at Google, lvlicrosoft and Amazon where 12,t][i[i, 1U,UDD and 1B,[i[i[i roles respectively have been axed have been ascribed to Al replacing staff in some quarters, but Mr Gates said this was not yet the case. "Al isn't, as yet, having an effect on the job market, but it will have an effect, because it is always a question of what happens if you make things less expensive," he said. Mr Gates said there were obvious benefits from generative Al in the medical profession, and across other industries where a lot of information needed to be understood. He said Al could easily help a doctor write prescriptions, and explain medical bills to patients for example, or also assist in both writing and understanding legal documents. "It is going to be a much better tool than in the past," Mr Gates said. "Word processors will do a bit with your grammar and your spelling, but if you want to summarise a document or draft a new one, they weren't that great, and that's all changing. "As you make a doctor's job more efficient [with Al tools] it doesn't mean you need less doctors, but there are some areas where things change, for example when radial tyres were invented, people didn't drive more, so we have less tyre factories. "Over time that labour went off and did other jobs, but now there will be a lot of angst about the fact that Al is targeting white-collar work."