Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has argued that he should not be seen as tainted by past association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The billionaire addressed his links with the late financier as a source of reputational baggage in an interview with Axios on Thursday, insisting people should not let the controversy overshadow his current positions on major issues, such as AI and global health.
“I made mistakes. I’ve changed,” Gates said. “I do think the record is clear, and people can just judge me on the record.”
Gates has denied involvement in Epstein’s criminal activity and told Congress that the infamous pedophile later attempted to blackmail him over extramarital affairs.
The tech mogul called his dealings with Epstein a “huge mistake,” insisting they were limited and motivated by an attempt to raise money for philanthropic projects.
This week Gates also released a sweeping essay on the coming “turbulent AI era” and the shift in his attitude to the technology. Artificial intelligence could become either “the greatest equalizer ever invented” or “the worst source of injustice,” he wrote, warning that governments remain dangerously unprepared for the social and economic upheaval ahead.
He acknowledged his “potential bias” and conceded that he has “benefited enormously” from the tech industry, retains financial ties to the sector and works with Microsoft and other AI companies through the Gates Foundation.
Gates is now warning that AI could unleash disruption on an entirely different scale. Unlike previous technological revolutions, he argues, it can substitute directly for human cognition and rapidly replace workers across law, medicine, customer service, software and manufacturing. Without the right policies, he predicts, there will still be some new jobs, but “far fewer than exist today.”
He also warns that increasingly accessible AI could make cyberattack capabilities and biological weapons easier for bad actors to develop, while autonomous weaponry could give governments greater ability to use deadly force without human involvement. Surveillance and the manipulation of public opinion would likewise become cheaper and more effective.
Eventually, Gates cautioned, the danger may come from the machines themselves: increasingly powerful systems “could begin to act against our interests and we could lose control.”
It is not the first time Gates has sounded the alarm about a looming global threat. In a widely viewed 2015 TED talk, he warned that the world was badly unprepared for the next major epidemic.
The Covid-19 pandemic later gave that warning an air of prescience, but Gates’ prominent involvement in global public health policy turned him into a lightning rod for distrust. His past warnings and the Gates Foundation’s participation in a 2019 pandemic simulation were subsequently woven into numerous conspiracy theories claiming that he had planned the outbreak and intended to profit from vaccines. He himself described such accusations as “crazy” and “evil.”
This time, Gates argues there may be even less room to slow down. While saying he would support a credible international plan to restrain AI development, he concluded that “geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing too hard to go full speed ahead.”
