Bill Gates warns AI could cause ‘a billion deaths’
“No one thinks self-regulation is enough," he added.
Bill Gates. By Bloomberg / Getty Images.
- Bill Gates warned AI could help people with bad intent cause massive loss of life.
- Gates said AI companies cannot regulate themselves and governments must require safeguards and monitoring.
- He is not calling for a pause in AI development, but for stronger oversight.
- Gates’ foundation recently pledged $1 billion for AI projects in health, education, and farming.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates warned that AI is “certainly powerful enough” to cause a billion deaths and called for governments to get more involved in regulating the technology.
“AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths,” Gates said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press. "Even though it's pretty hard to get to 100%, there's never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools."
Gates also argued that AI companies cannot adequately regulate themselves, saying: “No one thinks self-regulation is enough.”
“You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like,” he added. “And that has to be a required thing. And it will be a little bit of overhead for the industry, but not a dramatic slowing of what they’re doing.”
A few days earlier, he also told his foundation’s Goalkeepers gathering that society had “failed to build in the right human values and ways of keeping our moral code” to control what AI systems do.
This follows his August essay, where Gates argued that AI “will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice.” In the same essay, Gates called on world leaders to make ensuring AI benefits everyone a top priority.
However, Gates is not encouraging a rapid pause on AI development – quite the contrary, his foundation recently committed $1 billion to AI-focused initiatives to improve health outcomes, upgrade educational tools, and inform small farmers’ practices globally. His latest call is focused on government regulation and safeguards.
Trump has recently rejected efforts to slow AI development, calling critics “very negative forces” and arguing that he doesn’t want to give a lead in the AI race to China.
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Meanwhile, many AI industry leaders are pushing for development to slow, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently warning that swarms of rogue AI agents could “take over the entire internet" within six to 12 months.
