Mark Zuckerberg hits back after Bill Gates says just four jobs will survive AI takeover

Facebook and Meta mastermind Mark Zuckerberg doesn't buy into the narrative that AI will consume almost the entire job market.

In light of Bill Gates' anxiety-inducing comments about the four jobs that will survive an AI takeover - coders, athletes, biologists and energy workers are the fortunate few - the divisive programmer has come forward with a different angle on the argument.

During a live interview for Complex's Idea Generation platform, Zuckerberg (who will be portrayed on screen by Jeremy Strong in this year's The Social Reckoning) said on the topic: "I think that people assume that that's inevitability. I don't actually think it is."

The 42-year-old instead suggested that the job landscape will improve so long as firms focus more on 'personal super intelligence' over 'automating all knowledge work'.

He also claimed that a near-future populated by just 'a few companies' pushing for knowledge work automation wouldn't work either.

Bill Gates is envisioning a future where only four jobs will be handled by humans (Stefan JERREVANG/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images)

"If you have a balance where some companies are focused on making it so that companies can work more efficiently, but others are focused on more of this personal super intelligence vision where you're like empowering individuals and making people more productive at each step along the way, then I think it's probably going to be pretty good," he argued.

"If you focus on empowering people and making people more productive and that happens at a faster rate than companies get better at automating things, then in theory there should be more jobs in the future, not less."

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In a study published last year, Microsoft identified 40 jobs that are 'most at risk' of being rendered pointless by the ascendancy of technology.

Senior Microsoft researcher Kiran Tomlinson clarified to Sky News that the study 'explores which job categories can productively use AI chatbots, not take away or replace jobs', though.

Here are the jobs with the highest AI overlap:

• Interpreters and translators (98 percent overlap)
• Historians (91 percent overlap)
• Mathematicians (91 percent overlap)
• Proofreaders (91 percent overlap)
• Automatic machine coders (90 percent overlap)
• Writers and authors (85 percent overlap)
• Statistical assistants (85 percent overlap)
• Sales representatives (84 percent overlap)
• Technical writers (83 percent overlap)
• Journalists (81 percent overlap)

Supporting Gates' dystopian notion is Dr Roman Yampolskiy, who told podcaster Steven Bartlett that by 2027, the adult world could be facing 99 percent unemployment.

Yampolskiy warned that we'd likely have artificial general intelligence in the next 12 months, and when adding humanoid robotics into the mix, it 'makes no sense to hire humans for most jobs'.

"In five years all the physical labour can also be automated," he added. "So we're looking at a world where we have levels of unemployment we never seen before.

"Not talking about 10 percent unemployment which is scary but 99 percent."