Bill Gates Calls For Safeguards, Warns Of Billion Deaths By AI
WASHINGTON, DC- Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has warned that artificial intelligence could drive events causing one billion deaths, as Washington debates whether to impose safeguards on advanced AI or avoid regulations that could slow the United States in its competition with China.
Gates said in an interview with NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that AI was unlike earlier technological advances and could become vastly more intelligent than humans over the next several years.
“This is truly an evolutionary event,” Gates said. “We have created an intelligent species that, in many respects, is already smarter than we are, and over the next several years at kind of exponentially improving level will be insanely smarter than we are.”
Gates said AI was powerful enough to drive catastrophic events, particularly if used by people with malicious intent.
“AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths,” he said.
“There’s never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools,” he added.
Gates said governments lacked sufficient expertise to understand dangerous thresholds involving biological attacks, cyberattacks and other potential uses of the technology. He rejected reliance on voluntary safeguards by AI companies and called for legislation requiring safeguards and monitoring systems.
“No one thinks self-regulation is enough,” Gates said.
He said such requirements would impose some costs on the industry but would not dramatically slow AI development.
“It’s completely irresponsible not to require every AI to have these safeguards and monitoring capabilities,” Gates said.
His warning came as Rep. Ro Khanna, (D-CA) whose district includes part of Silicon Valley, called for a verifiable US-China agreement prohibiting AI systems capable of independently improving themselves.
Khanna said legislation backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar would ban recursive self-improving AI until safeguards were established.
“That is basically AI that isn’t being trained anymore by human beings. It’s AI that can train itself. And that is a real risk of losing human control,” Khanna said.
He called for the United States and China to create a working group of technologists and negotiate common restrictions.
“Banning self-recursive self-improving AI should not be controversial,” he said. “And I do believe the United States can lead on a treaty that is both enforceable and verifiable where we ban recursive self-improving AI, and we have some monitoring of these frontier labs.”
US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said Washington and Beijing had agreed to establish a superintelligence dialogue following President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Waltz said the talks would bring experts together to discuss guardrails covering areas such as
Attorney General Todd Blanche, however, cautioned against regulations that could weaken US competitiveness. He said existing criminal and civil laws already allowed authorities to act against individuals and companies when crimes were committed using AI.
“The answer isn’t always more laws, more laws, more laws,” Blanche said.(IANS)
