Bill Gates warns of large-scale casualties when AI is abused... Call for stronger government regulations

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft (MS), called for stronger government regulations, saying that artificial intelligence (AI) could cause large-scale casualties if it falls into the hands of malicious people.

In an interview with NBC that was partially released on the 25th (local time), Gates warned, "AI is clearly powerful enough to trigger an event that would cause the deaths of a billion people," and added, "It will be very difficult to reach 100% of the human population, but there has never been a weapon as powerful as the one used by malicious people in combination with the latest AI tools."

At the same time, he argued that the U.S. federal government must pass a bill to establish safety measures and a monitoring system for AI development. “No one thinks self-regulation alone is enough,” Gates said, adding that while related legislation may place some burden on the industry, it will not significantly slow down AI development.

Gates distinguished between the short-term risk of AI being exploited by terrorists or rogue states, and the long-term 'existential risk' concern that AI could threaten all of humanity. Last month, anticipating chaos in the job market, he also argued that some occupations should be designated for human use only.

This statement came amid growing controversy surrounding the controllability of high-performance AI models.

It was revealed on the 23rd that the OpenAI system hacked the Australian public health service website, and OpenAI did not report the incident to the Australian government for several months after the incident. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanage criticized this as “clearly unacceptable.”

Antropic also revealed this month that Yemeni militants, believed to be Houthi rebels supported by Iran, attempted to develop guidance, control, and navigation software for ballistic missiles using its AI model Claude.

CEOs of AI companies, including OpenAI's Sam Altman and Antropic's Dario Amodei, urged the United States to lead an international coalition that establishes AI safety standards at the UN Security Council last week on the 23rd.

However, the United States dismissed these demands at this meeting.

“Our primary responsibility is to ensure that the development of ‘superintelligence’ (SI) benefits citizens and protects their freedoms and way of life,” Michael Kratzios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said at the meeting.

He emphasized, “The United States completely rejects any attempt to establish an international system to control superintelligence.”