Bill Gates believes that artificial intelligence is already powerful enough to cause a catastrophe of historic dimensions. The co-founder of Microsoft He stated this in an interview with Kristen Welker for NBC’s Meet the Press this Sunday.
At one point in the conversation, Welker asked him about warnings from workers in the sector about possible human extinction, to which Gates focused on the malicious use of technology. ‘AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that cause a billion deaths’he stated before adding that ‘There has never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with bad intentions and the latest AI tools’.
Gates’ warning comes at a time of strong alarmism in both the technology industry and American politics. At the beginning of the month Dario AmodeiCEO of Anthropiccalled for reducing the pace of development of the most advanced AI and Sam Altman and Elon Musk They supported the idea. Jacob Coxon He left his position at Anthropic and accused that company OpenAI of ‘play with our lives’. The senator Bernie Sanders proposed a law on September 23 to temporarily pause the development of advanced AI while donald trump refuses to stop the sector so as not to lose advantage over China.
The interview left other relevant statements about how Washington should respond to that risk. ‘No one thinks self-regulation is enough’said Gates, and when asked if Washington should pass a law he answered ‘absolutely’. In his opinion, mandatory supervision would mean ‘a bit of an overload’ for companies without dramatically slowing down their work.
About having an AI kill switch he said that it’s not enough and that it has not yet reached the point where the systems take over computers autonomously and cannot be turned off. He also criticized the fact that AI is seen as a race between countries and described it as ‘completely irresponsible’ not requiring safeguards and monitoring of all systems.
There was also a lighter moment when Welker asked him if he avoids consulting AI in any area. Gates joked that He does not use her for his personal relationships nor does he ask her if she is a good person..
Gates’ tone on AI has been changing since the emergence of ChatGPT at the end of 2022. In May 2023 he refused to pause development because stopping only the good ones would be counterproductive and in July he defended on his blog that the risks were ‘real but manageable’. His essay from the end of August of this year warns that ‘many jobs will disappear forever’ and proposes reserving certain tasks for people and taxing AI tokens and robots. He continues to see great opportunities in healthcare or education, although he believes that AI will be ‘the greatest equalizer ever invented’ either ‘the worst source of injustice’.