Bill Gates warns of two decades of ‘tumultuous’ AI disruption

Gates, the cofounder and former CEO of Microsoft and chairman of the Gates Foundation, has sharpened his warnings since publishing an essay in late August titled “The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical.” In that essay, he wrote that “even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history.” In interviews since, he has called AI “the most dangerous thing that humans have ever gone near” and said it “makes nuclear weapons look like nothing.” The Verge reported that Gates does not think the White House’s policy response, or the AI industry’s lack of coordinated efforts, is sufficient to combat the threat.

In the interview, Gates said he remains convinced that AI can be beneficial if it is shaped in the right way, but that the response “broadly hasn’t been adequate to the speed that the challenge is arising.” He said he is very concerned that “the bad stuff will not be minimized and that a lot of good stuff could come fairly slowly if we don’t manage it the right way.”

Asked what made him feel the urgency of AI arriving faster than society can control it, Gates cited progress over the past year in writing code and finding cyber flaws, reasoning in biology, forming relationships with children or other people, and disrupting the job market. He said the “incredible power that exists today” means “every one of those things will happen and society needs to be ready.”

Gates also addressed whether the risks should be understood as a problem across the field of AI or as a problem tied to particular companies and their leaders. “The risk isn’t one model versus another model,” he said, adding that “the near-term danger of models where you can remove all the safeguards is very high.”

The Verge said the interview also covered how to control and align AI, including whether alignment solutions could be enforced for both closed-source and open-source models, as well as labor considerations, younger generations’ nihilism toward technological progress and what should make people hopeful about the future. Gates said the coming period could be so painful that it might divide society between people comfortable living near the technological frontier and those who reject it.