Microsoft co-founder says self-regulation insufficient, calls for legislative safeguards
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has called on U.S. federal lawmakers and law enforcement to regulate the development of artificial intelligence, warning in an NBC interview airing Sunday that the technology left unchecked could “cause a billion deaths” and that “no one thinks self-regulation is enough.”
In his conversation with Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gates urged policymakers to take up the question of safeguards directly. “You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like,” Gates told Welker. “And that has to be a required thing.”
Gates framed regulation as a manageable cost rather than a brake on innovation. “It will be a little bit of overhead for the industry — but not a dramatic slowing of what they’re doing,” he said.
In another excerpt circulated by NBC in advance of the broadcast, Gates dramatically admonished that AI in the wrong hands would be “certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths.” He added: “There’s never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools.” His warning echoed other recent comments by a wide array of tech and political figures, the Guardian reported.
The NBC interview follows a nearly 6,000-word essay Gates published in late August warning that AI poses potentially lethal risks to humanity on a large scale. Gates is generally regarded as optimistic about humans’ future, and many reporting or commenting on his conversation with Welker noted that it occurred in the wake of that essay.
His fellow tech moguls, including Sam Altman and Elon Musk, have joined Gates in calling for a slowdown of AI development. Some experts have theorized that advanced AI could precipitate the mass destruction of humans through bioweapons and nuclear war, among other methods, the Guardian reported.
While Gates has called for regulation of AI, Microsoft — the company he co-founded — has itself faced criticism over its role in AI deployment. In a Guardian essay published Friday, Mohamed Hussein and Granate Kim of the No Azure for Apartheid group wrote that Microsoft employees and activists have organized a campaign to push the company to cut ties with the Israeli military. The essay cited Israeli use of AI tools to kill in Gaza and, alongside U.S. forces, in Iran.
Hussein and Kim also warned that “horrors wrought by AI” are being seen in the United States. They wrote that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has used Microsoft Azure AI tools to monitor, arrest, and deport immigrants en masse.
The NBC interview and August essay mark some of Gates’s first major public appearances since he became entangled in the scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who pleaded guilty in 2008 to procuring a minor for prostitution and died by suicide while incarcerated on sex-trafficking charges 11 years later. An external review commissioned by the Gates Foundation and released in July determined that Gates was among a number of organization staffers and leaders who had collectively held about 30 meetings with Epstein from 2011 to 2014. Gates has not been accused of involvement in Epstein’s admitted or alleged crimes. He has said he regretted “every minute” he spent with Epstein. Gates remains chair of the $89 billion (£65 billion) Gates Foundation.
In a lighter moment with Welker, the host asked whether Gates avoids AI in any professional or personal context. “Well, I’m not using it for my personal relationships,” Gates replied with a chuckle. “I’m not like: ‘Hey, do you like me? Hey, am I a nice guy?’ So I just never went down that path, because I’m lucky in terms of my family, friends and everything. I don’t socialize with the AI. It knows I’m a very serious person.”