Bill Gates warns how a 'billion deaths' could be caused by unchecked AI
Bill Gates has issued a warning about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence, alerting the public that the technology could be powerful enough to cause a ‘billion deaths’.
The Microsoft co-founder has said that relying on AI firms to regulate themselves is not enough to protect people from the risks surrounding the tech.
Gates spoke to NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker where he said: “You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like, and that has to be a required thing.”
The billionaire added: “No one thinks self-regulation is enough.”
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While Gates did acknowledge that introducing additional such regulations would create some extra work for AI companies, he argued that this should not significantly slow down the industry’s development.
He explained: “It will be a little bit of overhead for the industry, but not a dramatic slowing of what they’re doing.”
Bill Gates warns AI could cause mass deaths
In his public warning, the tech boss went on to share a worst case scenario which he believes could become reality if AI continues to go unchecked.
Gates continued: “There’s never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools.”
He added that AI was ‘certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths’.
Gates isn’t the only mogul within the tech industry to issue such worrying warnings about the advancement of AI as other notable figures have also spoken out on the matter.
Earlier this month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei released an essay where he shared that he believes the ‘AI industry should slow down’, adding that AI ‘swarms’ could take over the internet in as soon as six months.
This warning from Amodei was met with support from other figures in the industry, with Elon Musk writing on X, formerly Twitter: “Dario is right.”
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s Sam Altman added: “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon.”
Bill Gates says AI ‘kill switch’ isn’t enough
In his interview, Gates mentioned the concept of an AI ‘kill switch’, dismissing it as not being enough to stop the technology.
Instead, he argued that discussions about AI safety need to be grounded in an understanding of how the technology actually works, rather than focusing solely on hypothetical scenarios.
Gates’ comments on AI come as governments around the world continue to debate on how much control should be placed on AI developers and how safeguards should work as AI becomes more capable.