Bill Gates (right) with Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman in Downing Street, London, in October 2024. Image: 10 Downing Street / Open Government Licence v3.0
Bill Gates has one of the starkest warnings yet about AI. In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, the Microsoft co-founder said AI is “certainly powerful enough to drive events” that could “cause a billion deaths,” and that the companies building it can’t be left to regulate themselves. NBC released the clip today, ahead of the full interview airing on Sunday.
What Gates said
Asked how dangerous AI really is, Gates put a number on it:
AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths.
Bill Gates, on NBC’s Meet the Press
A billion deaths would be roughly one in every eight people on Earth, far beyond any war or pandemic in history. And Gates was clear about where he thinks the danger comes from: people. “There’s never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools,” he said.
‘No one thinks self-regulation is enough’
The interview turned to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has called on AI companies to slow model development to reduce the risks. Asked whether the industry can regulate itself, Gates didn’t hesitate:
No one thinks self-regulation is enough, so there needs to be legislation passed in Washington. Absolutely.
Bill Gates
He wants “law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like,” and said “that has to be a required thing.” He also played down the cost to AI companies: it would be “a little bit of overhead for the industry, but not a dramatic slowing of what they’re doing.”
A direct challenge to this week’s plans
The timing is pointed. Just yesterday, reports emerged that Google, OpenAI and Anthropic are planning their own industry watchdog to set safety standards, precisely the kind of self-regulation Gates says isn’t enough. And while Sam Altman and Dario Amodei asked the UN Security Council this week for global rules, the Trump administration has rejected any “globalist scheme” to control AI, making the legislation Gates wants look unlikely any time soon.
Gates is also far from the most optimistic voice in tech. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang recently put the chance of AI ending the world at “0%” and called such warnings irresponsible, while Anthropic’s own alignment lead, Evan Hubinger, puts the odds that AI could kill all humans within a decade at more than 10%. Gates’s figure, a billion lives, is one of the most concrete warnings any tech leader has given, and he thinks it demands laws.
A warning aimed close to home
The company Gates co-founded is one of the biggest players in the race he’s warning about. Microsoft is OpenAI’s largest backer and is putting its own AI, Copilot, into Windows, Office and its new Copilot “super app”. Gates left Microsoft’s board in 2020 and now focuses on the Gates Foundation, but he’s still one of its best-known faces, which makes his call for tougher rules on the industry all the more striking.
Why it matters
Gates helped build the modern tech industry and has spent years funding global health, so a warning about mass casualties from him carries weight well beyond the usual AI debate. His call for mandatory government monitoring puts him on the opposite side from the White House, and from the growing push for AI companies to police themselves.
Source: NBC News, Meet the Press
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