SEATTLE — Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has issued a stark warning about artificial intelligence’s potential to permanently eliminate large numbers of jobs, calling on governments to prepare now for widespread labor disruption rather than waiting for the market to sort out the fallout on its own.

In a nearly 5,900-word essay titled “The turbulent AI era is here,” published last month on his personal website, Gates Notes, Gates argued that AI differs fundamentally from earlier labor-saving technologies because it threatens to substitute for the very cognitive work that historically created new jobs as older ones disappeared, such as when workers moved away from farms and factories over the past century.

“We have to think now about how to reduce job losses so that everyone can share in the prosperity that AI creates,” Gates wrote in the essay.

Gates identified sales, customer support, software engineering and paralegal work among the white-collar occupations most likely to face early disruption from AI systems, alongside tasks such as assessing loan applications, analyzing data and triaging patients. He expressed particular concern for younger workers entering a labor market with fewer entry-level openings than previous generations encountered.

“I worry about my grandkids, as robots increasingly take on entry-level functions,” Gates wrote, according to CNBC’s account of the essay. “It’s hard to move up the ladder when there is no bottom step to help you get on that ladder.”

Beyond white-collar work, Gates said he expects increasingly capable robots to begin competing for physical tasks in construction and hospitality by the end of the decade, extending AI’s disruptive potential well beyond office-based cognitive work. He acknowledged that public skepticism about robotics may currently be shaped by viral videos of robots performing clumsily, but argued that underlying capability is advancing faster than casual observers might assume.

To address the coming disruption, Gates outlined three central proposals in his essay. The first calls for new governance institutions, both domestic and international, capable of coordinating AI policy across employment, education, taxation, health, security and energy simultaneously, rather than leaving individual government agencies to manage separate pieces of the transition independently. Gates has pointed to elements of nuclear inspection regimes, international aviation regulation and environmental treaties as potential models for the kind of international cooperation he believes will ultimately be necessary, while acknowledging that building such a framework would take years and require difficult cooperation among major world powers.

Gates’s second proposal, which he calls “Human Reserved,” suggests that societies should deliberately set aside certain jobs or tasks for humans even in cases where machines become technically capable of performing them. Gates has compared the concept to a nature reserve, land that could technically be developed but is deliberately left alone because the long-term cost of development would outweigh any short-term benefit.

Gates cited caregiving as a clear example of work he believes should remain human-reserved, drawing directly on his own family’s experience. His father received round-the-clock care before dying of Alzheimer’s disease in 2020, an experience Gates said shaped his thinking on the issue significantly.

“Something in the care they gave my dad was irreplaceably human,” Gates wrote. “No robot could or should have done it.”

Gates offered a similar example involving the delivery of difficult medical news, arguing that certain moments carry human significance beyond pure technical efficiency.

“There’s no technical reason why it couldn’t,” Gates wrote regarding the prospect of a robot delivering a terminal diagnosis. “Yet it shouldn’t.”

Gates has acknowledged significant unresolved questions surrounding how a Human Reserved system would actually function in practice, including who would decide which jobs qualify for protection and how authorities would prevent companies from circumventing such restrictions. According to reporting from GeekWire, Gates said these details “will need to be worked out in public,” and revealed he has been actively discussing potential implementation approaches with Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, including exploring ways to reserve as much as 40% of overall work for humans through measures such as shorter workdays and earlier retirement to help redistribute remaining employment.

Gates’s third major proposal involves shifting a portion of the tax burden away from human labor and toward automation, specifically by taxing AI computing usage, sometimes referred to as tokens, along with robots themselves.

“I believe we should tax AI tokens and robots,” Gates wrote, according to HR Executive’s coverage of the essay.

Gates argued that the current tax structure creates a built-in incentive favoring automation over human employment, since employers pay payroll taxes when hiring workers but can typically write off the cost of a robot as an immediate business expense. He said a targeted tax on AI and robotic labor could help modestly slow the pace of substitution while generating revenue to fund worker retraining programs and a stronger social safety net, though he specified that such a tax should not impede AI applications that make medicine and education more affordable.

Gates was careful throughout the essay to frame his proposals as starting points for public debate rather than fully developed policy plans. He did not specify a tax rate, a taxable unit, or a collection mechanism for his proposed automation tax, and acknowledged that measuring AI usage across cloud services, internally developed models and mixed human-machine workflows would present significant practical challenges.

Independent labor market research offers a narrower and more preliminary picture than Gates’s broader forecast. A Stanford Digital Economy Lab paper, revised Aug. 12, analyzed ADP payroll records covering millions of U.S. workers through June and found that employment among workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed occupations ran 19% below where it would have been expected to track based on less-exposed peers, while experienced workers in the same fields showed no comparable employment gap. The researchers characterized their findings as early descriptive indicators rather than definitive proof of AI-driven job losses, noting that the divergence occurred primarily through reduced hiring rather than increased layoffs, and that similar effects appeared less pronounced in broader national survey data.

Critics of Gates’s automation tax proposal have raised concerns about potential unintended economic consequences. Robert Seamans, an associate professor of management at New York University, has argued that existing empirical evidence suggests robots generally boost productivity growth, meaning a tax specifically targeting robotic automation could inadvertently limit broader productivity gains at a time when many economies are already grappling with sluggish growth.

Gates has characterized the overall stakes of the current moment in stark terms, describing the odds of a net negative outcome from the ongoing AI transition as “very high” absent meaningful policy intervention. As of early September, his proposals remain firmly in the realm of public debate rather than enacted policy, with the central open questions being whether governments will translate his ideas into concrete legislative proposals, and whether broader employment data in the months ahead will eventually confirm the kind of structural labor market disruption Gates has warned is coming.

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The Nifty 50 has gone unusually quiet, but history suggests investors may not have much longer to enjoy the calm. The index recorded 21 trading sessions with daily movements of less than 1% in August 2026, an exceptionally subdued stretch that could precede a sharp expansion in volatility. The direction of the next move remains unclear, but the magnitude could be significant.

“Such periods of extreme calm have not necessarily indicated whether the next major move would be upward or downward, but they have often preceded a meaningful increase in market movement,” said Raj Gaikar, equity research analyst at SAMCO Securities.

Gaikar analysed 6,630 trading days across 320 calendar months since January 2000 and found only eight months in which the Nifty did not record a single daily move of plus or minus 1% or more.

That makes August’s market behaviour a rare event, occurring roughly once in every 40 months.

The previous instances were June 2017, July 2018, December 2019, June 2021, April 2023, and July, September and December 2025. All eight occurred after 2017, with no similar episode recorded during the first 17 years of the dataset.

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Big move, uncertain direction

The immediate aftermath of these calm periods was not necessarily dramatic. The Nifty’s average one-month forward return was 1.22%, with the index ending higher in five of the eight instances.The three-month performance, however, was far more volatile. Returns ranged from a decline of 29.34% to a gain of 12.06%. Six of the eight episodes were followed by a move of more than 5% in either direction.

That historical pattern makes the current setup less a bullish or bearish signal than a warning about the market’s compressed trading range.

“With August 2026 now joining this rare list, the data suggests that the Nifty may be entering another phase where volatility could return after an extended period of consolidation,” Gaikar said.

The August calculation excludes the 1.60% market move on Aug. 3, which was attributed to the introduction of the new Closing Auction Session and occurred during the closing auction.

The subdued index performance comes as strategists increasingly expect returns to become more dependent on earnings delivery and individual stock performance.

Axis Securities said its investment strategy for September should shift “from index-level positioning towards earnings-led stock selection.” The brokerage said the broader market had already benefited from domestic liquidity and better-than-expected earnings growth.

Going forward, it expects companies with visible earnings growth, strong cash flows, credible capital-expenditure plans and improving return ratios to outperform.

Axis Securities raised its December 2026 Nifty target to 27,360 after upgrading its Nifty earnings estimates for FY27 and FY28 by 0.3% each. Its target is based on 19.5 times December 2027 estimated earnings.

The brokerage remains constructive on Indian equities, citing macroeconomic fundamentals, government capital expenditure, GST 2.0 reforms and an improving corporate earnings cycle. But it also advised investors to maintain diversified portfolios and reduce concentration in expensive stocks.

Anand Shah, CIO – PMS & AIF, ICICI Prudential Alternate Investments, echoed that view. “We expect returns to become increasingly earnings-led and stock-specific rather than driven by broad-based multiple expansion,” Shah said.

His concerns include higher crude oil prices and currency weakness, which could create imported inflationary pressures. The investment approach, he said, remains focused on companies with visible earnings growth, resilient balance sheets, cash-generative operations and reasonable valuations.

Foreign investor activity has also improved after a prolonged period of selling. Arihant Bardia, CIO and founder of Valtrust, said foreign portfolio investors turned buyers in July after four consecutive months of selling and continued buying in August. FPIs bought ₹20,200 crore in July and ₹29,631 crore in August, he said.

“If the recent improvement in FPI flows sustains, we could see a meaningful rerating of select large caps, particularly private banks,” Bardia said.

That potential return of foreign demand could provide support to parts of the large-cap market. But Bardia also expects earnings delivery, rather than liquidity alone, to drive returns.

The same shift is visible across the broader market strategy. While Axis Securities expects Nifty earnings to grow at a 13% compound annual rate between FY23 and FY28, it warned that geopolitical tensions, crude oil volatility and currency movements could still generate near-term turbulence.

The message from the market’s unusual August calm is therefore straightforward: the Nifty may be quiet, but the risk environment is not. History does not reveal whether the next move will be higher or lower. It does suggest that the current lack of movement may not last.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

A charity is hosting a music event to fund a project that helps families with the costs of Christmas.

The Greenaway Foundation provides families in Kent, Sussex and Surrey with ingredients for a two-course Christmas dinner to help with the costs of the festive season.

The organisation hosts a music festival, Greenaway Live, at Crawley Rugby Club from 15:00 BST on Saturday, with ticket sales helping fund its work for families struggling financially.

Darren Greenaway, who founded the charity, said the Christmas project was “getting bigger and bigger, so this year we need to raise about £200,000”.

As part of the charity’s festive work, children from low-income families can make a “make a wish for a Christmas present”, which the organisation delivers on Christmas Eve.

It expects to support over 1,000 families in 2026, and Greenway said some parents would “break down and cry when we turn up and make the delivery”.

The first Greenway Live was held in 2025. The second year of the event will be streamed on the charity’s social media.

“I was on my honeymoon trying to arrange it,” Greenway told the BBC.

“This year we said we’d try again and obviously it seems to be getting more and more traction, so we’ve all now started planning towards next year.”

He added: “All the live acts are donating their time for free, so it’s a mini Live Aid.”

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Elon Musk and Chess.com have reignited a public feud that dates back years, trading a series of pointed messages on X this week after the billionaire made a sweeping claim about the future of the game.

“The actual number of moves that are not utterly stupid in chess is tiny and chess will be fully solved one day,” Musk wrote in a post on X on Sept. 3.

The prediction quickly drew a response from whoever manages Chess.com’s official X account.

“Skill issue,” the account replied in a quote-tweet later that same day, using a term commonly deployed in online gaming culture to question someone’s competence.

What followed was a rapid exchange of snarky, passive-aggressive posts between Musk and the Chess.com account, with Musk defending his understanding of the game while Chess.com repeatedly questioned it. The exchange, while new in its specifics, extends a rivalry between Musk and the popular chess platform that stretches back nearly four years.

The origins of the feud trace to December 2022, shortly after Musk had purchased Twitter and before he renamed it X. Musk posted about his own history with chess at the time, dismissing the game’s complexity relative to real-world scenarios.

“I did as a child, but found it to be too simple to be useful in real life: a mere 8 by 8 grid, no fog of war, no technology tree, no random map or spawn position, only 2 players, both sides exact same pieces, etc.,” Musk wrote in that earlier post.

Chess.com responded at the time not just with a tweet, but with a full blog post titled “Why Elon Musk Doesn’t — And Can’t — Play Chess.” The post pushed back directly on Musk’s characterization of the game as simplistic, highlighting several nuanced rules that it argued undercut his argument, including castling, en passant, pawn promotion and the unconventional movement pattern of the knight piece.

Addressing the knight specifically, Chess.com’s blog post took a notably sharp tone.

“How can one piece jump over another and then have the possibility of landing on up to eight squares?” the post read. “True, it’s not random and it’s probably confusing to someone who is a billionaire.”

Chess.com also replied directly to Musk’s original 2022 tweet, though that earlier exchange did not prompt any public response from Musk at the time, leaving the rivalry largely dormant until this week’s renewed exchange.

Following Chess.com’s “skill issue” jab this week, Musk offered a more detailed defense of his position on the game’s ultimate solvability, drawing a comparison to another classic board game that has already been fully mathematically resolved.

“Chess is hard for humans, but not for computers,” Musk wrote. “One day, it will be fully solved like checkers. Between now and then, or even after, have fun. People enjoy many games/sports where machines are vastly better.”

The back-and-forth continued from there, growing increasingly personal at points. Musk at one stage referred to whoever runs the Chess.com account as an “intern,” prompting a swift correction from the account.

“I’m a full-time employee,” the Chess.com account replied.

The Chess.com admin also poked fun at how quickly Musk was responding throughout the exchange, suggesting the billionaire’s rapid replies stood out compared with his own social circle.

“Even my friends don’t text me back that fast,” the account wrote.

The public spat drew significant attention from other users on X, many of whom sided with Chess.com in the exchange. One user, posting under the handle @CantEverDie, offered a pointed take on the dynamic playing out in real time.

“Have been really enjoying this chess account wolloping on Elon Musk for the last 12 hours,” the user wrote. “Elon Musk continues to be one of the dumbest people around.”

Chess.com spokesperson Bianca Facey offered a similarly sharp assessment of the exchange in comments to USA Today.

“We understand losing a chess game can be frustrating, but losing a Twitter fight to a so-called intern must be maddening,” Facey said.

X had not responded to a request for comment on Musk’s behalf regarding the exchange as of publication.

Chess.com’s willingness to engage playfully, and at times combatively, with high-profile figures and internet culture more broadly is not new for the platform. The company has built a substantial following for its social media presence over the years, frequently leaning into meme culture surrounding the game. Jokes referencing Chess.com and specific chess rules have circulated widely across platforms including Reddit, where one popular post shared in the r/AnarchyChess subreddit in 2021 joked about a player getting “en passant’d” by an opponent, humorously suggesting the confusing but legal move was so unexpected that the victim assumed they had been hacked and searched for how to report the incident to Chess.com.

The platform has also generated viral moments independent of its rivalry with Musk. In March 2025, Chess.com shared a tweet asking users to suggest a new name for the bishop chess piece, a post that drew more than 53.4 million views and prompted a flood of replies, many of which simply suggested renaming it “bishop.” The account’s admin responded to the wave of unhelpful suggestions with characteristic humor.

“Please stop suggesting ‘bishop’ … silly name,” the Chess.com account wrote at the time.

Musk’s history of public disputes with individuals and organizations on X, the platform he owns, has become a recurring feature of his online presence in recent years, spanning everything from business rivals to media figures to, now, a chess website’s social media team. Whether this latest round of sparring with Chess.com produces any further escalation, or fades as quickly as it began, remains to be seen, though the exchange has already generated significant engagement and amusement among users following the back-and-forth in real time on X this week.

India may be trading at a valuation premium to most emerging markets, with the Nifty 100 currently valued at around 21 times earnings compared with 14-17 times for several other EMs. But headline price-to-earnings multiples alone may not tell the complete story.

Kashyap Javeri, Head of Research and Fund Manager at Emkay Investment Managers Limited, argues that comparing markets purely on index-level valuations can be misleading, particularly when indices across emerging markets have vastly different compositions and concentration levels. Instead, investors should focus on company-specific growth and valuations, where opportunities continue to remain attractive on a PEG basis.

In an interview with Kshitij Anand of ETMarkets, Javeri discusses why India’s markets should not be judged solely by the Nifty’s headline PE multiple, the strong and increasingly broad-based earnings growth in mid- and small-cap companies, the role of SIPs in driving domestic institutional flows, early signs of fatigue in FPI selling, and the key risks posed by rising crude oil prices and currency weakness. Edited Excerpts –

Q) Most experts say valuations and earnings offer a reasonable starting point. But India is still trading at a premium to most emerging markets. What exactly is “reasonable” here—and what would make you admit that Indian equities are still expensive?

A) Nifty 100 today trades at 21x PER vs many of the emerging markets trading between 14-17x PER. However, looking at the plain PER numbers how does one conclude that Indian markets are expensive or cheap vs most emerging markets? In some of the emerging markets, the indices are so skewed that one or two stocks 42% to 55% of index weight. How do you compare the PERs of two markets? What we as well as global investors don’t seem to appreciate SEBI’s regulatory oversight on such undue influence of 1-2 stocks on the markets. We believe that if one shifts focus from headline numbers on PER and earnings to more focussed stock specific approach, there are plenty of opportunities available in the market to deploy money. We don’t believe that Indian markets are expensive at stock specific level compared to growth that they offer. PEG at stock specific level remains very attractive.

Q) If earnings are genuinely improving, why haven’t valuations corrected more aggressively? Are investors already pricing in the recovery?

A) The valuations at the index level are also driven by overall composition. For example nearly 47% of Nifty 100’s weight is BFSI+IT+RIL. We haven’t seen a very rosy picture of earnings here and hence the valuations have neither corrected much nor improved. However, if you go one step below – Nifty Smallcap 250 and Nifty Midcap 150 indices’ earnings grew at healthy 20+% for FY26 as well as Q1FY27 and hence Nifty Midcap 150 Index again crossed its all time high yesterday and Nifty Smallcap 250 index is just 1% away from the same.

Q) Everyone is calling Q1 earnings encouraging. But how much of that growth is actually broad-based, and how much is being driven by a handful of sectors or companies?

A) The earnings today are more than democratised than ever before. For FY26 as well as Q1FY27, the earnings of Nifty Smallcap 250 and Nifty Midcap 150 indices’ earnings grew at healthy 20+%, in fact higher for Smallcap. If you look at most broker reports, upgrade to downgrade ratio is 1x+ after long time and has improved for straight two quarters. More than sectors have seen earnings growth higher than index of which they are part of.

Q) DIIs have been relentless buyers. But are domestic flows actually reflecting investor conviction, or are SIPs simply creating an automatic bid regardless of valuations?

A) One would be correct in saying that SIPs are currently driving DII flows completely. Adjusted for SIP flows, the mutual funds have seen net outflows in 3 out of last 5 years. However, it is also true that Indian retail investors have raised SIP investment from $17bn in FY22 to nearly $40bn in FY26 shows their conviction. Let’s not make a mistake of assuming that only lumpsum flows in the market are smart money.

Q) We are seeing early signs of FII buying. But, can we call this as a turnaround after just a couple of months of modest flows?

A) Two things worth noting here – while FPI flows have been modest, they were net buyers in 26 out of 40 trading days in Q2FY27. That itself shows the incessant selling has started witnessing fatigue. Secondly, FPIs are not the only barometer global investor’s sentiment. If you look at FY26, gross inward FDI towards India stood at $95bn (of which $62bn was fresh money), the repatriation by private equity players thawed. For Q1FY27, we have already seen $31bn flowing in.

Q) If US bond yields remain elevated, crude moves higher and the rupee weakens simultaneously, does the current bullish thesis break?

A) Crude oil continues to threaten not only Indian markets but world markets too. From India’s standpoint its very important given that our import bill on petroleum stands at $180bn (or nearly 5% of our GDP). We have seen in past that whenever our FX cover falls below 7.2-7.5 months of our import bill plus short-term FX debt repayments, the currency has seen sharp depreciation like it happened in last 6-7 months. Lets hope that FCNR deposits and FDI money helps us improve the same.

Q) Large-, mid- and small-caps have all performed well. But isn’t that exactly what makes you nervous? Where are valuations most disconnected from fundamentals?

A) We believe that the valuations mismatched cannot be looked at sectoral level. Barring IT, almost every industry in India is witnessing tailwinds and within those industries, valuations of some stocks will overshoot the earnings expectations and in some cases they may undershoot due to some exogenous factors. Be mindful of such scenarios but stay invested!

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views, and opinions given by experts are their own. These do not represent the views of the Economic Times)