Bill Gates. [Reuters]
Bill Gates. [Reuters]

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has warned that AI could become a powerful enough threat to kill 1 billion people if misused, and urged governments to enact strong regulations to oversee its development.

Speaking to NBC News on Friday (local time), Gates said, "AI is clearly powerful enough to cause an event that would take a billion lives," adding, "Targeting all of humanity would be very difficult, but there has never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of a malicious individual and cutting-edge AI tools."

Gates said the tech industry can no longer be relied upon to regulate itself, and called on governments to pass legislation to monitor AI development and put safeguards in place.

"Everyone knows that self-regulation alone is not enough," he said. "Creating laws will place some burden on the industry, but it won't dramatically slow down what companies are doing."

Gates made the remarks amid a growing safety debate among executives at major technology companies, as competition in AI development has intensified in recent months.

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon left the company in August after warning on social media that AI could destroy humanity within a decade.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has also warned of the potential for AI misuse and urged that the pace of model development be slowed to allow time for safeguards.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI's Elon Musk have both expressed support for that position. Altman posted on X that he agreed with Amodei and said OpenAI would follow a policy of deploying external safety evaluators.


bbo@heraldcorp.com