Bill Gates says a kill switch won’t stop AI’s worst-case scenario

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates says a “kill switch” alone won’t be enough to stave off the dangers of artificial intelligence — and getting the world to agree on real safeguards will be harder than ending the Cold War.

Mr. Gates made the case in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” warning AI is evolving dangerously enough to threaten mass casualties in the wrong hands.

“AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths,” he said, adding there’s “never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools.”

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Some lawmakers in Congress have proposed a “kill switch” to shut down dangerous AI systems, but Mr. Gates said that alone won’t be enough. “You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like,” he said, calling it “a required thing” that would add only “a little bit of overhead for the industry.”

Reaching that kind of global agreement, Mr. Gates said, will be tougher than the U.S.-Soviet nuclear standoff. “This is more difficult than that was,” he said.

His remarks land amid a widening rift over AI oversight: The White House has resisted new guardrails, even as the leaders of Anthropic and OpenAI publicly call for government intervention, warning that unchecked AI could threaten humanity.

Read more:

• Bill Gates: AI powerful enough to cause ’a billion deaths’ without regulation

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