Bill Gates has warned that President Donald Trump’s dismissal of concerns about artificial intelligence reflects a wider failure to understand how quickly the technology could reshape society.
Speaking on CBS Mornings, the Microsoft co-founder said many people initially viewed AI as comparable to previous technological advances. Mr Trump has described claims that AI could cause serious harm to people as a “hoax”.
“Most of society is still not aware of how quickly it’s moving,” Mr Gates said. He added that comparisons with earlier technological changes were unhelpful because AI could exceed human intelligence, describing it as “almost an evolutionary event”.
Mr Gates said AI could bring major improvements to people’s lives, but warned that it could also be misused for bioterrorism, financial hacking and other destructive activities.
“If he wants to get credit for helping the entire world, the AI topic is his best bet,” Mr Gates said of the US president. “The leader that brings people together there will deserve positive recognition.”
AI’s potential impact on jobs
His comments follow an essay published last month in which he argued that AI was changing the global economy more rapidly than earlier technological revolutions, leaving less time to prepare for disruption in employment.
Mr Gates wrote that AI would take on work in law, customer service, medicine, software and manufacturing “over the course of a decade rather than a few generations”. He said new jobs would be created, but warned that without suitable policies there could be fewer jobs overall.
The technology industry has recently been engaged in a debate over the potential dangers of AI. Among those calling for development to be slowed are Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.
Mr Gates also highlighted the potential for AI to improve access to education, healthcare and agricultural support. The Gates Foundation is committing 1 billion dollars over two years to expanding access, including enabling people to use large language models in languages other than English.
The initiative involves about 60 participants, including Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and the OpenAI Foundation. Mr Gates said it could help in parts of Africa where there are few doctors, allowing patients to describe their symptoms in their native languages, although he acknowledged that support for many of the world’s languages remained “very, very poor”.
