Bill Gates stated that AI can lead to the death of a billion people

According to Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, modern artificial intelligence systems can lead to the death of a billion people if they fall into the wrong hands. He stated this in an interview with NBC News.

By Gates' words, self-regulation of technology companies is not enough to ensure safety. He called on the US authorities, lawmakers, and law enforcement agencies to develop mandatory safety requirements and monitoring of AI systems. The entrepreneur believes that regulation will add burdens to companies but should not significantly slow down the development of technologies.

The entrepreneur noted that the threat does not only come from scenarios of the distant future but is already relevant today due to the combination of powerful AI tools with intentions to cause large-scale harm.

In the US technology industry, discussions about the pace of AI development continue. The head of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, and the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman, have previously spoken in favor of standards and state or international regulation, while the head of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, is against industry-wide coordination, believing that companies should assess risks on their own. The authorities of the states of California, Maryland, and New York have already introduced initiatives to control the technology.