Bill Gates says AI risks are real but nothing we can't handle
CTV
Bill Gates sounds less worried than some other executives in Silicon Valley about the risks of artificial intelligence.
Bill Gates sounds less worried than some other executives in Silicon Valley about the risks of artificial intelligence.
In a blog post on Tuesday, the Microsoft co-founder outlined some of the biggest areas of concern with artificial intelligence, including the potential for spreading misinformation and displacing jobs. But he stressed that these risks are “manageable.”
“This is not the first time a major innovation has introduced new threats that had to be controlled,” Gates wrote. “We’ve done it before.”
Gates likened AI to previous “transformative” changes in society, such as the introduction of the car, which then required the public to adopt seat belts, speed limits, driver’s licenses and other safety standards. Innovation, he said, can create “a lot of turbulence” in the beginning, but society can “come out better off in the end.”
Microsoft is one of the leaders in the race to develop and deploy a new crop of generative AI tools into popular products with the promise of helping people be more productive and creative. But a number of prominent figures in the industry have also publicly raised doomsday scenarios about the rapidly evolving technology.
In late May, tech leaders including Microsoft’s CTO Kevin Scott joined dozens of AI researchers and some celebrities in signing a one-sentence letter stating: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
Gates has previously said people should not “panic” about apocalyptic AI scenarios. In a blog post earlier this year, Gates wrote: “Could a machine decide that humans are a threat, conclude that its interests are different from ours, or simply stop caring about us? Possibly, but this problem is no more urgent today than it was before the AI developments of the past few months.”
