Over the next decade, advances in artificial intelligence will mean that humans will no longer be needed “for most things” in the world, says Bill Gates.

That’s what the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist told comedian Jimmy Fallon during an interview on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” in February. At the moment, expertise remains “rare,” Gates explained, pointing to human specialists we still rely on in many fields, including “a great doctor” or “a great teacher.”

But “with AI, over the next decade, that will become free, commonplace — great medical advice, great tutoring,” Gates said.

In other words, the world is entering a new era of what Gates called “free intelligence” in an interview last month with Harvard University professor and happiness expert Arthur Brooks. The result will be rapid advances in AI-powered technologies that are accessible and touch nearly every aspect of our lives, Gates has said, from improved medicines and diagnoses to widely available AI tutors and virtual assistants.

“It’s very profound and even a little bit scary — because it’s happening very quickly, and there is no upper bound,” Gates told Brooks.

The debate over how, exactly, most humans will fit into this AI-powered future is ongoing. Some experts say AI will help humans work more efficiently — rather than replacing them altogether — and spur economic growth that leads to more jobs being created.

Others, like Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, counter that continued technological advancements over the next several years will change what most jobs look like across nearly every industry, and have a “hugely destabilizing” impact on the workforce.

“These tools will only temporarily augment human intelligence,” Suleyman wrote in his book “The Coming Wave,” which was published in 2023. “They will make us smarter and more efficient for a time, and will unlock enormous amounts of economic growth, but they are fundamentally labor replacing.”

Gates is optimistic about the overall benefits AI can provide to humanity, like “breakthrough treatments for deadly diseases, innovative solutions for climate change, and high-quality education for everyone,” he wrote last year.

Talking to Fallon, Gates reaffirmed his belief that certain types of jobs will likely never be replaced by AI, noting that people probably don’t want to see machines playing baseball, for example.

“There will be some things we reserve for ourselves. But in terms of making things and moving things and growing food, over time those will be basically solved problems,” Gates said.

AI’s development does come with “understandable and valid” concerns, Gates wrote in a 2023 blog post. Today’s top-of-the-line AI programs are rife with errors and prone to enabling the spread of falsehoods online, for example.

But if he had to start a new business from scratch, he’d launch an “AI-centric” startup, Gates told CNBC Make It in September 2024.

“Today, somebody could raise billions of dollars for a new AI company [that’s just] a few sketch ideas,” he said, adding: “I’m encouraging young people at Microsoft, OpenAI, wherever I find them: ‘Hey, here’s the frontier.’ Because you’re taking a fresher look at this than I am, and that’s your fantastic opportunity.”

Gates saw the AI revolution coming nearly a decade ago: When asked which industry he’d focus on if he had to start over from scratch, he quickly chose AI.

“The work in artificial intelligence today is at a really profound level,” Gates said at a 2017 event at Columbia University alongside Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. He pointed to the “profound milestone” of Google’s DeepMind AI lab creating a computer program that could defeat humans at the board game Go.

At the time, the technology was years away from ChatGPT-style generative text, powered by large language models. Yet by 2023, even Gates was surprised by the speed of AI’s development. He’d challenged OpenAI to create a model that could get a top score on a high school AP Biology exam, expecting the task to take two or three years, he wrote in his blog post.

“They finished it in just a few months,” wrote Gates. He called the achievement “the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface [in 1980].”

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC and NBC, which broadcasts “The Tonight Show.”

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Before making a push to become the highest-paid woman on television, “Grey’s Anatomy” star Ellen Pompeo reached out to the show’s creator, Shonda Rhimes. 

Though Rhimes had no power over Pompeo’s paycheck, the actress wanted to get her blessing and give Rhimes a heads up before making headlines with her salary demands. 

In a recent appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, Pompeo said that not only did Rhimes give her the green light, she also encouraged her to ask for what she was worth. 

“I said to her: ‘I’m going to go in and ask for this much. Are you cool with that?’” she said. ”[Rhimes] was like, ‘Yeah, no one’s going to give it to you. You have to ask for it.’”

With Rhimes’ blessing, Pompeo landed a $20 million a year contract in 2017. Though she wanted to check in with Rhimes before entering negotiations, Pompeo had no qualms about telling the network what she felt she was worth. 

“Women should always push the envelope,” she said. “All anyone can say is no.”

For Pompeo, securing a high salary was not only about feeling respected and appreciated by the network, but also about power.

“I became aware at a really early age that people with money had power,” she said. “I didn’t have any power as a young woman. And I didn’t like the way that felt.” 

Having enough money to do — and not do — whatever she wanted, was the “freedom” that Pompeo was looking for. 

“To be financially independent, to me, is what makes me the happiest and makes me feel the most free,” she said. “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.”

“As a woman I’m sure you know how freeing it feels to have financial independence,” she continued. “You don’t have to be with any man you don’t want to be with. For women, financial freedom is true independence.” 

And like Rhimes encouraging her to push for her $20 million salary, Pompeo said she wants to use her power to help “advocate for other women on your platform, in your job, in your workplace.”

“How can I take that power and do good with it?” she said. “How can I amplify someone else? How can I help someone else? How can I lift up someone else that doesn’t sit i the position of privilege that I sit in?”

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This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.

In 2008, during what would come to be known as the Great Recession, stories like Nicole Brewer’s were all too common.

At 27, she’d recently bought a condo on the South Side of Chicago with little money down and a loan that would likely stretch her mid-$30,000′s salary thin. Then the market research firm she worked for did layoffs, and she lost her job.

Amid a financial crisis, finding another one proved difficult. After collecting unemployment benefits for five of the allotted six months, Brewer, like many of her peers, was growing desperate.

“I remember I got scared and I was like, ‘OK, what are you going to do if your unemployment runs out? You don’t have a job,’” she tells CNBC Make It. “That’s when I started looking at opportunities. I said, ‘I’ll think outside the box, look at some teaching jobs abroad.’”

Brewer found a gig teaching English at a primary school South Korea, a move that would satisfy some wanderlust while she waited for the U.S. economy to bounce back.

But that’s where her story gets a little less common. After three years in Korea, Brewer took a college-level ESL job, this time in Nizwa, an ancient city in Oman about a 90-minute drive from Muscat, the nation’s capital. She’s been there ever since, living happily and traveling — and currently earning a salary of just over $40,000 a year, plus some side-hustle income.

“I have had such an incredible experience living here. I never even imagined that I would be here for 10-plus years, because I just felt comfortable here,” Brewer, 43, says. “My mental health has definitely been great here.”

A move abroad can be daunting — especially for someone in a precarious financial situation. But for Brewer, who’d moved to a new country with just two suitcases, things were surprisingly seamless.

“Fortunately at that time, being recruited to work for the education department in Korea, they helped set you up,” she says. That meant covering the cost of her flight and assigning her a liaison from her school who helped her find an apartment and transition into working life in Busan, a city of just over 3 million people.

Back home, things were still rough. The renter she’d found to take over payments on her Chicago condo lost his job too and soon fell behind. The bank foreclosed on the property.

That may have made life difficult for Brewer had she chosen to return to the States on her original timeline. But it didn’t take long for her to realize that expat life suited her.

Her home base in Korea, along with a modest cost of living, allowed her to see parts of the world she would have likely otherwise missed, including trips to India and the Philippines. “I was able to live comfortably and still travel a bit,” she says.

After three years, Brewer was looking for a change of pace, and initially thought she might like Dubai. While researching the region, she came across a posting for a job at a university in Oman. “After seeing that posting, I ended up researching on my own and I was like, ‘Wow, this is a very beautiful country,’” Brewer says.

She gave it a chance, boarding a plane in 2012, once again with two suitcases and plans to figure things out when she got there. Other than brief stints in Germany and South Africa to complete an accelerated masters program in international humanitarian aid, she’s stuck around.

Brewer’s main gig is still teaching English, a job which pays her about $3,400 a month, even when school is not in session. Over the years, she’s picked up some side hustles, too, as a freelance travel writer and part-time travel advisor. Those brought her an extra $3,400 in 2024.

Brewer is still an American citizen and pays income taxes in the U.S. And even though she doesn’t necessarily blend in with the locals — she doesn’t speak Arabic or practice Islam — her Yankee status comes with a certain level of respect. “I like to call it ‘passport privilege,’” she says.

Overall, she says, being a Black American woman doesn’t come with many of the burdens while living abroad as it might have back home. “I wouldn’t say that I deal with much or any racism, because I think it’s more so, you’re American — we take pride in having an American who loves living in Oman.”

Even though it took a while for Brewer to adjust to the conservative Omani lifestyle — and casual dating is still a struggle — she says she consistently feels welcomed by the Omani people.

“They welcome me. They say, ‘Oh, hello, sister,’ when I get in taxis. They call me sister like I’m one of them because I respect the culture,” she says. “It’s been very great. I wouldn’t have stayed as long as I had if it wasn’t a good life here.”

Despite the region’s reputation for opulence, Brewer’s day-to-day life in Oman is unostentatious and, by U.S. standards, inexpensive. Here’s how she spent her money in January 2025.

• Travel: $2,630 on flights and hotels for a trip to Bali, Indonesia
• Rent: $650
• Food: $348 on groceries and dining
• Cab fare: $277
• Discretionary: $133 on clothing, donations and various fees
• Health and wellness: $65 on spa treatment and prescriptions
• Netflix subscription: $15
• Phone: $10

Brewer’s two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment came fully furnished, and she pays 250 Omani rials — or roughly $650 — a month in rent, utilities included. She spends about $70 or $80 a week on groceries. Insurance, a major line item in most American workers’ budgets, is covered by her employer.

Living relatively modestly for most of the year allows Brewer to devote significant funds toward her life’s passion: travel. More than half her January spending went toward a trip to Bali during her school’s winter break.

She generally takes two or three big trips a year, and her location in the Middle East makes it easier to travel to some parts of the world than if she had stayed in the U.S. Trips to Namibia and the Seychelles, she says, are much more affordable with Oman has a home base.

“I’m able to travel to Europe, of course, as well, because it’s right there,” she says.

Even given her relatively low cost of living, traveling the world on a teacher’s salary means Brewer has had to put some financial goals on the back burner. Although her credit cards are paid off, she still carries about $24,600 in student debt from her time as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan.

And while she has about $22,000 invested across stocks and cryptocurrency, it’s hardly enough for her to feel like she’s on track for major financial milestones, like retirement.

“I do feel like sometimes maybe I beat myself up because I feel like I should have more in savings, considering how long I’ve been abroad,” Brewer says. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘Maybe I could have not gone to this destination and have a little more money padded in my savings.’ But the reality is, I’m grateful for every trip that I have been on.”

In the coming years, Brewer hopes to ramp up her savings enough to fund a semi-retirement of sorts in Portugal.

“In the perfect scenario, I would have a hostel. It would be a place where I can live, as well as have additional rooms to be able to rent out and make an income from the property,” she says.

For now, though, she has no plans to leave what she says is a fulfilling and peaceful life in Oman.

“It’s not an easy life to be on the other side of the world from your family, especially when emergencies and family situations come up,” she says. “You have to take the good with the bad. But overall, I do have a peace of mind living here because it’s so safe and people are really kind-hearted.”

Conversions from OMR to USD were done using the Bank of Muscat’s conversion rate of 1 USD to 0.3877 OMR on Jan. 1, 2025. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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A lot of parents tell their children that can achieve anything if they work hard and apply themselves. But that doesn’t account for luck, which is a huge factor that many highly successful people have said they owe their careers to, points out Anthony Mackie, star of the 2025 movie “Captain America: Brave New World.”

“We are lying to our kids,” Mackie, 46, said in a recent interview with The Pivot Podcast. “We tell [them] … if they do right and they make the good grades and they go to the programs, they will become successful. ‘If you work hard enough, your work will [pay off].’ And that’s not true.”

In many cases, “success is given [and] not earned,” Mackie continued.

Mackie had been an actor for over 10 years before landing the role that many consider his big break, as Sam Wilson in 2014′s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” he said. After graduating from the prestigious Juilliard School in 2001, he performed in both on- and Off-Broadway productions and in Academy award-winning films, like 2008′s “The Hurt Locker.” However, the New Orleans native struggled to break out in Hollywood’s highly competitive landscape.

Mackie estimates he “put in 10,750 hours of training” before landing that life-changing job. He was proactive, too: He wrote letters to executives at Disney’s Marvel Studios over a decade ago in the hopes of landing a role in one of the studio’s popular superhero films, he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023.

While the letters didn’t result in any roles right away, Mackie eventually landed a meeting with directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. They offered him a part in an upcoming film, though they couldn’t share many details: ”[They said], ‘We can’t say what character you’re playing or who else is going to be in it. Would you do it?’” Mackie said.

The actor agreed because he liked the directors and believed joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up, he said. Fortunately for Mackie, the role of Sam Wilson proved popular enough to grow from a small character into a headliner.

Mackie is far from the only successful person to recognize the power of luck. You can be the smartest and most deserving person in the room, the billionaire and Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger told students at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business in 2018, but there are no guarantees: “There’s also a factor of luck that comes into this thing.”

He added: “I did not intend to get rich. I wanted to get independent. I just overshot.”

Similarly, in 2023, Mark Cuban told GQ that any billionaire who says they could definitely start over from scratch is “lying their a– off.” That’s because a person also needs “luck” and good “timing” to run a highly lucrative company, particularly in the fast-moving tech industry.

If he’d been born three years earlier, he likely wouldn’t have the status that he has today, Cuban added.

Put simply, being in the right place at the right time, and having connections, can be as important as having the skills and experience.

People who benefit from luck the most have a few traits in common, according to Richard Wiseman, author of “The Luck Factor” and a psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire.

1. They’re optimistic. Even when they find themselves in bleak circumstances, “lucky” people recognize that things “could have been far worse,” Wiseman wrote for CNBC Make It in 2022.
2. They always jump at new opportunities. Lucky people display an openness and adaptability that puts them in situations to network and make new connections, according to Wiseman.
3. They listen to their intuition. Too much time spent pondering can lead to “indecision,” he added, writing that lucky people tend to “make quick decisions …. By trusting their gut, they’re more likely to take action and expose themselves to new opportunities.”
4. They recover quickly from setbacks. This allows lucky people to remain positive when things don’t go how they’d hoped and “increases the likelihood of them continuing to live a lucky life,” according to Wiseman.

Embodying these four traits can help put you in a better position to make your goals a reality, he added.

The second and third traits in particular helped Mackie, who, in 2025, became a new face of the “Captain America” franchise, once led by former co-star Chris Evans.

“When you’re given a huge opportunity like that, you have to take into consideration that you might fail,” Mackie said. At first he was afraid, but he didn’t let that stop him. He had a network of mentors and supporters who could help, he realized: “I had to lean on those teachers and the people around me who got me to that point.”

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Mega Millions is raising its ticket price from $2 to $5 — but it’s also boosting how much you could win.

Starting April 8, the game will undergo a major revamp: the initial jackpot will increase, potential non-jackpot prizes will be larger and the odds of winning most prizes will improve due to the removal of one gold Mega Ball from the drawing.

By shrinking the gold Mega Ball pool from 25 to 24, the odds of winning the jackpot will improve from about 1 in 302.6 million to 1 in 290.5 million. The odds of winning any prize will also improve slightly, from 1 in 24 to 1 in 23.

The starting jackpot will more than double, rising from $20 million to $50 million. The average jackpot is expected to exceed $800 million, up from around $450 million, according to the consortium that runs the lottery.

One of the biggest changes is how non-jackpot prizes are multiplied. In most states, players can currently pay an extra $1 to add a “Megaplier” that boosts lower-tier winnings. That feature is going away. Instead, every $5 ticket will automatically include a random multiplier of 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X or 10X for all non-jackpot prizes.

That means a $10 prize in the old game could now be worth $20, $30, $40, $50 or $100, depending on the multiplier drawn. The full prize matrix is available on the lottery’s website.

Some other notable changes under the new rules:

• The minimum prize will increase from $2 to between $10 and $50, for matching the gold Mega Ball
• Matching five white balls but not the Mega Ball will pay between $2 million and $10 million, up from a flat $1 million
• The “Just the Jackpot” feature, available in some states and offering two plays for $3 but only for a chance to win the jackpot, is being discontinued

The last drawing under the current rules will take place Friday, April 4. If no one wins that jackpot, it will roll over into the revamped game. Any winning ticket bought before the change will still be paid out based on the old prize structure, no matter when it’s claimed, the lottery says.

Even with the changes, the odds are overwhelmingly against players. Lottery games remain an extremely poor bet, with little chance of a return. Considering the odds, players should only bet what they can afford to lose.

Mega Millions is played in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with drawings held at 11 p.m. ET on Tuesdays and Fridays.

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