Bill Gates says AI could cause ‘a billion deaths,’ rips ‘full speed ahead’ approach

Bill Gates gave stark warnings about artificial intelligence, warning that it could kill a billion people if a “full speed ahead” approach was taken.In an interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press, the Microsoft founder gave his perspective on the new alarmist perspectives on AI, which have dominated the national conversation over the past month. He warned against viewing AI development as a competition and urged developers to take more time considering how to develop the technology.“AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that cause a billion deaths. So 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. And it’s great that there’s this discussion with the industry, almost against their interest, admitting these things,” Gates said. The billionaire also warned of a lack of expertise within the government, given that the technology was developed primarily in the private sector.“AI has emerged from the private sector, and so the depth of understanding of these dangerous thresholds that were crossed literally this year, bioattack capability, cyberattack capability, and others, you have so little expertise in the government,” he said.Gates then warned against a “nationalistic … us vs. them” handling of AI, which leads to the “full speed ahead” approach. He called it “completely irresponsible” that there wasn’t a requirement to put vigorous safeguards and monitoring capabilities in place. Gates also said regulation wouldn’t even “slow things down in a meaningful way,” as AI development is undergoing exponential increase.“People look to the U.S. for leadership on tough issues. Usually, that’s benign leadership, bringing people in. And they’re a little confused when that’s not taking place,” he said.Gates dismissed popular calls for AI systems to have a “kill switch” installed, calling it “kind of a weird thing” that misunderstood AI, and one that was “not enough.”NEWLY UNCOVERED OPENAI ATTACKS PUT MORE PRESSURE ON GLOBAL LEADERS TO FIND A WAY FORWARD“We’re not yet at the point where they autonomously grab computers and can’t be shut down. So that discussion just sort of shows how nontechnical various people are. I would never want to say I’m against a kill switch. But when you’re trying to moderate the bad behavior, you need insight and records of what’s being done. So the kill switch alone would not prevent these tragedies,” he argued.The global conversation around AI intensified over the last month, as more revelations emerged about some of the more worrying capabilities of advanced AI, particularly after the Hugging Face cyberattack over the summer, which saw AI agents autonomously set up a complex, secret network to try to hack into a website. At the U.N. General Assembly this week, it was revealed that OpenAI agents had autonomously hacked into an Australian government website, a first event of its kind.