Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates said no government in the world is properly prepared for a looming global crisis in artificial intelligence, adding to an outpouring of warnings from top tech leaders about the rapidly progressing technology.
The 70-year-old philanthropist had been an AI optimist for years, but in a new interview with Reuters, he warned that the tech could erase jobs, launch cyberattacks, worsen the inequality gap and pose a danger of addiction to users.
“I don’t think any government is nearly as deep on this as they have to be…Governments are way behind on this one,” Gates said, after several tech execs this week urged President Trump and global leaders to collaborate on more stringent industry regulations.
Gates said he has been talking to Trump and his team about his concerns, and is hoping to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping later this year.
“There’s all sorts of movies where some aliens are coming, and magically the US and China and everybody comes together to solve the problem,” Gates said. “AI is kind of like this alien intelligence. It’s here, and we better do like it shows in those movies.”
Tech leaders started sounding the alarms over the weekend after Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who previously worked at Anthropic and OpenAI, quit his job and issued a chilling warning that AI “could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei then published a lengthy essay calling on rival companies to slow their development of AI models, fearful of the risks that come with recursive self-improvement, or RSI – when AI models grow smart enough to advance independently. OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SpaceX founder Elon Musk backed Amodei’s letter.
However, Gates also noted that there are many potential benefits from artificial intelligence, including the ability to help the world’s poorest live better lives.
On Tuesday, the Gates Foundation pledged to spend at least $1 billion over the next two years on expanding global access to AI and exploring ways to use it to counter social inequalities. It is part of the nonprofit’s previously announced plans to spend $9 billion annually.
The $1 billion will go toward partners in education, healthcare and agriculture. It will also be spent on improving the data sets AI is trained on, so large language models will work in every language people speak.
“For health it’s hard to overstate what the potential is,” said Gates, who called out the ability to help frontline health care workers and discover new drugs and vaccines.
Gates also acknowledged public backlash over his ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, saying it has not had any effect on his foundation’s work.
“In terms of having access to government leaders, or you know, journalists being willing to interview me, I don’t see any diminishment,” he said, adding that requests to work with the foundation on reducing child deaths and ending malaria has not reduced “even one iota.”
In sworn testimony to Congress in June, Gates admitted to having affairs with two Russian women, claiming Epstein had tried to use the infidelity to blackmail Gates into reconnecting after they cut ties.
Gates testified that he was introduced to Epstein in 2011, three years after the disgraced financier pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution and four years after Epstein reached a controversial non-prosecution agreement.
Gates said the relationship ended by December 2014.
The Microsoft co-founder and some staffers at the Gates Foundation had been named in the Department of Justice’s Epstein files – a trove of hundreds of thousands of files showing the sex criminal’s communications with powerful pols, celebs and financiers.
Gates has not been accused of any crimes and has apologized for his relationship with Epstein, calling it a “grave error in judgment.”
An external review at his foundation found no payments to Epstein or links to criminal activities.
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