Bill Gates: Artificial Intelligence Could Cause the Death of One Billion People

Washington – Agencies: Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, warned that artificial intelligence is “powerful enough” to help cause the deaths of a large proportion of humanity, joining a growing chorus of technology sector leaders and employees cautioning about the existential risks posed by AI. In an interview with NBC, Gates said, “AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that lead, as you know, to the death of a billion people.” He added, “The world has never seen a weapon that matches in power the use by malicious actors of the latest AI tools.”

These remarks have brought a long-standing, divisive debate within the tech industry into the public spotlight, sparking public calls for technology companies to make greater efforts to safeguard their technologies. Since then, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for slowing the pace of AI development, a proposal quickly endorsed by his peers, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk.

Gates emphasized in the interview, “We need law enforcement agencies and politicians to be involved in the discussion about the form of safeguards and oversight. And it must be mandatory.”

Earlier, in an article published in August, Gates warned that malicious actors could use increasingly powerful AI tools to launch cyberattacks, carry out fraud, spread disinformation, and inflict other forms of widespread harm against hospitals, financial institutions, power grids, and government systems.