Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates doesn’t agree with the top leaders in artificial intelligence that self-regulation of the emerging technology is the answer, preferring a hands-on approach from the government instead.
Gates is the latest industry figure to weigh in on how to keep frontier AI development from getting out of hand. His stance differs from the shared view of the chief executives of OpenAI and Anthropic, who argue that the leading AI labs need to slow the pace of AI progress. Gates argues federal lawmakers need to be involved as well.
“No one thinks self-regulation is enough,” he said in an interview with NBC News’s Meet the Press before its release on Sunday.
“You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like,” he added. “And that has to be a required thing. And it will be a little bit of overhead for the industry, but not a dramatic slowing of what they’re doing.”
In recent weeks, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have been publicly supporting the push for federal AI legislation on top of their own companies’ steps to self-regulate frontier AI models. They took their concerns to the world stage at the United Nations General Assembly this week, calling for international cooperation on the issue.
“If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone,” Altman said in an appearance before the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. “They must be shaped through democratic processes and by governments accountable to the people that they serve.”
Amodei, who addressed the global body remotely, reiterated the industry’s belief that AI developers may lose control of the very products they’re building.
“If managed poorly, I even believe that AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” Amodei said. “At Anthropic, we believe we have the best track record in the industry for preventing these risks.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was one of the industry leaders who disagreed with the pro-international approach offered by Altman and Amodei.
“I don’t think that we need some kind of industrywide coordination,” he told NBC News. “I think that each lab needs to take the time, and when it sees that there are issues, you just take the time that you need internally to basically make sure that you’re proceeding safely.”
In his pretaped interview with NBC News host Kristen Welker, Gates addressed the existential fear regarding the future of AI.
“AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths,” he said. “You know, so even though it’s pretty hard to get to 100%, there’s never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools.”
This isn’t the first time that the billionaire philanthropist has spoken on AI recently. Last month, he penned a nearly 6,000-word essay that called for the creation of an international organization solely designed to monitor AI.
“It will be unlike any other institution we have ever created, though it can follow the model of some existing systems,” Gates wrote. “There’s an inspections regime for nuclear weapons, regulations for international aviation, and agreements that protect the ozone layer. A new global organization for AI will need elements of all three and more.”
BILL GATES CALLS FOR CREATION OF GLOBAL BODY TO MANAGE ‘TURBULENT’ AI TRANSITION
Earlier this week, 20 nations and the European Union proposed an international declaration calling for “control of frontier AI models” through a global oversight body. Eight more nations have since endorsed the statement, but the United States is not one of them.
During his U.N. speech, President Donald Trump explicitly rejected the “globalist scheme” to control AI for the rest of the world. He is of the view that the U.S. needs to become the undisputed global leader in the AI race against China.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
