Bill Gates: AI Is Already Powerful Enough to Cause the "Death of a Billion People"

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has warned that artificial intelligence has become powerful enough to help cause the deaths of a significant share of humanity, joining a growing list of tech industry leaders and practitioners calling attention to the existential risks it could pose. AI is certainly powerful enough to drive some events that would, you know, cause, say, a billion deaths, Gates said in an excerpt of a media interview due to air this weekend. Theres never been a weapon that was as powerful as somebody with malevolent intent using the latest AI tools. In the interview, Gates said industry self-regulation alone would not be enough. Law enforcement and politicians need to be in the discussion about what safety protections and monitoring should be, and those have to be mandatory, he said.