WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has rejected President Donald Trump's denial of potential risks posed by Artificial intelligence.
Continuing his tirade against calls for tighter overlook on cutting-edge artificial intelligence models, Trump earlier this month had termed them as 'hoax'.
'It's not a hoax at all,' Gates said in an interview with NBC Sunday.
In a public challenge to Trump's stand on many AI-related issues, Gates justified the opinion that the United States should hold back AI development, urged tougher safeguards and argued that Beijing will likely follow suit if Washington takes the initiative to draft new rules to regulate the use of AI.
Speaking on NBC's 'Meet the Press' program, he called on the Congress and regulators to make laws to control the development of artificial intelligence. 'You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like.'
Gates suggested that he would like to have a conversation with Trump, and try to convince him to shift his thinking towards AI regulation.
'I hope that, given my life's work in the field, my saying how unique and different this is and how concerned I am will add to what he's hearing from other people.'
In Bill Gates' opinion, AI without regulation is 'completely irresponsible.' He said he totally disagrees with the notion that China will not put the AI safeguards in place.
Gates Warned against the consequences of inactivity and AI getting in the wrong hands. 'AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths.'
'There's never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools,' he added.
Jacob Coxon, a former researcher at Anthropic - the company behind the chatbot Claude - resigned from his position weeks ago while warning that 'the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.'
Several recent incidents, including Coxon's resignation and announcements by OpenAI and Anthropic that their models had broken out of testing environments, have intensified the global debate over the extent to which governments should regulate the technology.
Gates appeared not agreeing with the concept of a 'kill switch' that could turn off AI if it became too powerful. 'It's not enough to have a kill switch. We're not yet at the point where . they autonomously grab computers and, you know, can't be shut down. So that discussion . just sort of shows how non-technical various people are.'
According to Gates, the future of AI will evolve in two phases.
In the first phase, the technology has the potential to solve key issues such as the high cost of living and expensive healthcare, but he cautioned by saying, 'Yet it will be changing the job market and potentially empowering criminals if we don't have the right safeguards, so you have a period that's probably 20 years long where you have this adjustment.'
In the second phase, humanity will start reaping the benefits of AI, which Gates described as 'an era of abundance.' 'Once you get through that, then a combination of humanoid robots and AIs will provide. Building houses, growing food, a lot of things.'
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