Bill Gates can’t believe that no one is worried about AI as much as he is.
In a new blog post — and accompanying media blitz — the billionaire suddenly sounded alarmed about how the technology is shaping our future after being blindly optimistic about it for years, warning that it’ll annihilate jobs and desolate the economy.
“AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice,” he wrote in the nearly 6,000 word essay (which, incidentally, isn’t the only 6,000 word AI screed from a major tech leader this month.)
“Even under the best circumstances,” he added, the “transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history.”
Ever the protagonist, the Microsoft founder is astonished that no one else is as panicked about it as he is.
“I am in a state of shock that I’m sort of the first one saying, ‘This is crazy. This is insane,'” Gates told Semafor in an interview. “I’m just deafened by the silence.”
One wonders when the last time he had his hearing checked was. Economists have been warning about how generative AI could disrupt the workforce since the moment that ChatGPT became a global sensation. Often AI companies themselves are parroting these same warnings. And that’s not to mention the other ways that it’s already having impacts beyond the economy, such as sowing misinformation and fueling mental health crises.
But better late than never. Gates says he’s worried about these impacts, too, warning Semafor that unlike previous technological revolutions in the past, which created more jobs than they destroyed, AI will do the opposite, touching virtually every field.
“There isn’t a job that isn’t affected,” he told Semafor. “It’s different not because the speed is different, but the breadth is what makes it utterly, utterly a unique moment in evolutionary history.”
He also shared that he’s finished writing a “whole book” about avoiding a pandemic caused by an AI-engineered virus. “The bioterrorism risk is 50 times the natural pandemic risk now,” he said.
Gates, however, is far from anti- AI. One of his chief concerns is that if we don’t properly rein AI in, it might turn the newly jobless masses against this wonderful technology, preventing us from seeing it realized to its full potential.
“What is the backlash going to be as these jobs go away?” he asked Semafor. “It’ll make the data center thing look like nothing.”
One of Gates’ most striking claims, though, is that tech leaders are knowingly downplaying AI’s risks because of the money involved.
“In private, people who understand how good this stuff is, and how much better it’s getting, they’re very worried,” he told the New York Times. But rather than going public about these risks, “they’re now saying to each other: ‘Hey, man, don’t say that. It’s bad for us — the next trillion dollars we’re trying to raise.”
Is Gates simply sticking his finger to the wind? His public image has been tarnished by recent revelations about his interactions with the deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, which cast his heavily publicized divorce and infidelity from a few years ago in an even nastier light.
Still, if he’s a bellwether for how tech elites are processing the incredible public backlash to AI, it could signal a shift in how the tech is deployed and regulated.
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