Bill Gates Warns AI Could Kill Billions Without Safeguards

Bill Gates has issued a stark warning about the dangers posed by the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence.

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the Microsoft co-founder urged governments to strengthen oversight of the technology and warned that AI could potentially contribute to events resulting in “a billion deaths.”

“AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that cause a billion deaths,” Gates told moderator Kirsten Welker. He added that while wiping out all of humanity would be extremely difficult, no previous weapon had combined such extraordinary power with people acting on malicious intent and access to advanced AI tools.

Welker asked Gates what measures could help prevent AI-related disasters, prompting him to outline some of the challenges facing regulators and the technology industry.

Gates said AI could make it increasingly difficult to tell the difference between researchers working on lifesaving treatments and bad actors attempting to develop biological weapons.

“I wish it was easier to distinguish good intent, like I want to design a new drug for a disease, versus negative intent, which is I want to design a tool of bioterrorism,” Gates said.

He argued that the potential consequences make rigorous oversight of the most advanced AI systems essential, and called on the United States to take the lead in creating meaningful safeguards.

“Because those are so close, we do need to monitor any sophisticated model and record exactly what’s being done,” Gates said.

Gates said China was likely to adopt comparable safeguards, but maintained that the United States should move first by setting clear standards for the industry.

“You’ll hear from the industry, it’s a very doable thing. It would not slow them down dramatically,” he said.

He distinguished those protections from the separate question of whether the broader development of AI should be slowed.

“These safeguards, their monitoring, are separate from whether we would be better off slowing down,” Gates explained.

President Donald Trump rejected the idea earlier this month that advances in AI could lead to the end of humanity, telling reporters that such outcomes were “things that won’t happen.”

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“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins,” Trump told reporters at his golf course in Doonbeg while attending the Irish Open earlier this month.

House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has also weighed in, saying in a CNN interview earlier in September: “We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us.”

Democrats, by contrast, have appeared more open to regulating the fast-moving technology.

Former Democratic President Barack Obama recently offered his own assessment at a private gathering, according to reporting first published by The New York Times.

“This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think it can be dangerous,” Obama reportedly said at an event this month, according to the Times.

Obama, who believes that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will be the next Speaker after the November elections, also urged the top Democrat to act.

‘Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation,’ Obama told Jeffries per the Times.

This comes after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon sensationally resigned from his position and accused the company and its rival OpenAI of not doing enough to address the potential dangers of the technology earlier this month.

Coxon warned that researchers working in the field believe AI could potentially ‘kill all humans’ by the end of the decade.

Days later, an Anthropic report said that it has stopped several potential plots to build biological weapons using its artificial intelligence this year.

The company determined that scientists were using its platforms to conduct research that could be used to develop biological weapons, according to the company’s new AI misuse report that was obtained by The New York Times.

Anthropic was unable to determine if the research ‘served a legitimate or nefarious purpose,’ the report said.

The firm noted that valid biological inquiry can result in scientific breakthroughs like vaccines, but the company erred on the side of caution because that same research could also be used to create dangerous pathogens.