Bill Gates Warns AI Could Turn Into a Billion-Death Weapon
Bill Gates Warns AI Could Turn Into a Billion-Death Weapon
For more than a decade, Elon Musk has framed advanced AI as an existential threat rather than merely another disruptive technology. In a reposted account of his past comments, Musk is credited with comparing AI to “summoning the demon” in 2014 and calling it more dangerous than nuclear weapons four years later; the post says he has put the odds of catastrophic outcomes, including extinction, at 10% to 20%.
By August, Bill Gates — long one of the technology sector’s most prominent optimists — was making a closely related argument. In a memo on AI, he described the technology as more consequential than virtually any other in history and warned that it could become either “the greatest equalizer ever invented” or “the worst source of injustice.” On the present trajectory, he said, there was “a very high chance of a net negative outcome.”
Gates sharpened that warning in excerpts released Friday ahead of a scheduled Meet the Press interview. “AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths,” he said, while stressing that the nightmare scenario was not inevitable.
His concern is less about machines acting alone than about people using them. “There’s never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools,” Gates said.
The two figures arrive at the same broad fear from slightly different public roles: Musk has repeatedly sounded an existential-risk alarm, while Gates is pairing his warning with a demand for political action. Gates says governments and political parties must work together now to keep AI from spiraling out of control.
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