Bill Gates Chimes in on the Dangers of AI

In a new GatesNote, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates says that our concerns about AI are rational, but that fears of AI destroying humanity are overblown.

“This is not the first time a major innovation has introduced new threats that had to be controlled,” he writes in the new post. We’ve done it before.”

Citing obvious examples like cars, PCs, and the Internet, Gates argues that transformative moments are always turbulent at first but that the improvements they bring win out in the end. With AI, we’re just at the earliest stages of this new transformation, he says, and it’s evolving so quickly that it makes people nervous. But he says we have nothing to fear.

“One thing that’s … clear to me is that the future of AI is not as grim as some people think or as rosy as others think,” he writes. “The risks are real, but I am optimistic that they can be managed.”

He then steps through the major fears. For example:

Deepfakes and misinformation generated by AI could undermine elections and democracy. “We have not solved the problem of misinformation and deepfakes. But two things make me guardedly optimistic. One is that people are capable of learning not to take everything at face value … The other thing that makes me hopeful is that AI can help identify deepfakes as well as create them.”

AI makes it easier to launch attacks on people and governments. “The good news is that AI can be used for good purposes as well as bad ones. Government and private-sector security teams need to have the latest tools for finding and fixing security flaws before criminals can take advantage of them. I hope the software security industry will expand the work they’re already doing on this front—it ought to be a top concern for them … Governments should consider creating a global body for AI similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

AI will take away people’s jobs. “In the next few years, the main impact of AI on work will be to help people do their jobs more efficiently. That will be true whether they work in a factory or in an office handling sales calls and accounts payable … But it is true that some workers will need support and retraining as we make this transition into an AI-powered workplace … keep in mind that this is not the first time a new technology has caused a big shift in the labor market. I don’t think AI’s impact will be as dramatic as the Industrial Revolution, but it certainly will be as big as the introduction of the PC.”

AI inherits our biases and makes things up. “I’m optimistic that, over time, AI models can be taught to distinguish fact from fiction. OpenAI, for example, is doing promising work on this front. Other organizations, including the Alan Turing Institute and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, are working on the bias problem. One approach is to build human values and higher-level reasoning into AI. It’s analogous to the way a self-aware human works.”

Students won’t learn to write because AI will do the work for them. “It reminds me of the time when electronic calculators became widespread in the 1970s and 1980s. Some math teachers worried that students would stop learning how to do basic arithmetic, but others embraced the new technology and focused on the thinking skills behind the arithmetic … AI can help with writing and critical thinking.”

There is a lot more to this post, and while I’ve cherry-picked some key points above, I do recommend that read it in its entirety. I’m not the biggest Gates fan given his history, but I think he’s making some common-sense points here. (And I’ve made a similar argument about the jobs fears.)