Bill Gates warns AI is ‘powerful enough to drive events that cause a billion deaths’
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- Bill Gates is pro-government regulation of AI companies.
- In an upcoming interview with “Meet the Press,” Microsoft’s cofounder said the tech could “cause a billion deaths.”
- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has urged the AI industry to prioritize safety.
Bill Gates has some serious fears about how AI can be misused.
The cofounder of Microsoft made grave warnings about the tech in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying that “AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that cause a billion deaths.”
Gates also said that the industry needs government regulation. “You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like,” he said.
Gates’ comments echo those of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who said in a September essay calling on frontier AI companies to slow down development that the “most effective method of pacing is via regulation.”
In a clip of the “Meet the Press” published on Thursday ahead of the full interview on Sunday, Gates said he worries about bad actors getting their hands on advanced AI tools. Anthropic recently published a report detailing several instances where state and non-state actors used Claude to plan drone attacks and for dangerous biological research.
Amodei’s essay calling for AI pacing, which received support from Elon Musk and Sam Altman, was published in the wake of warnings from ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who wrote a viral post about resigning and AI labs “gambling with our lives.”
The AI safety warnings have so far failed to convince Washington that development of the tech should be paused or slowed down. President Donald Trump, for his part, mocked Amodei, accusing him of “pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel.'” Trump has signaled strong disinterest in regulating AI, though he did pledge last week to create an “AI Force” that would “watch over” AI companies.
Even Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO and chairman, has appeared reticent to call for all-out regulation of the tech. In a recent appearance on the All-In Podcast, Nadella said AI companies should handle things on their own.
“If you see a show-stopper,” Nadella said, referring to anomalies in code that could produce rogue AI agents, “stop the show.”
Though there is broad agreement across Silicon Valley that AI companies should implement more robust safeguards to protect against incidents like OpenAI’s breach of Hugging Face, CEOs differ on how such safeguards should be enforced.
This month, Nadella warned in a memo to Microsoft employees viewed by Business Insider that companies must take time to make the technology safe.
Gates, who now serves as a technology advisor to Nadella and other Microsoft executives, was previously one of AI’s most outspoken optimists before changing course over the summer.
In an essay he published in August, Gates said the world has no plan to roll out AI safely.
“I believe we need time to prepare for the period of social, political, and economic upheaval we are about to enter,” he said. “If someone had a credible plan for slowing down AI advances globally, I would likely support it.”