SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Depending on who you ask, AI could unlock the true power of humanity or threaten humanity itself. Lately, both messages are coming from the same people. The CEOs of AI companies are raising louder and louder warnings about the technology's potential dangers as they continue developing advanced AI. With so much in the hands of Big Tech CEOs, we figured it is a good moment to talk to someone who very much understands that point of view, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who now chairs the Gates Foundation.
I'll note here the Gates Foundation is a financial supporter of NPR. Today, it announced over $1 billion to expand access to AI tools in order to tackle social inequities. While at the same time, Bill Gates himself is warning that AI could turn out to be, quote, "the worst source of injustice" ever. Bill Gates, welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
BILL GATES: Thank you.
DETROW: Since we've heard so many apocalyptic scenarios this week, I want to start with a concrete example from you of how you think AI tools could help lift people from poverty.
GATES: Well, the Gates Foundation, the majority of its work is helping low-income countries in health, agriculture and education. So AI, for example, if you take a farmer, it can take your photos of your crops, you know, tell you what's going on with the disease. It can give you weather data that you never had before. It can tell you about your soil and what fertilizers you should use. And it'll understand the market prices and when you should store your crop and when you should sell it. And so it's been phenomenal to see that already hundreds of thousands of farmers in Asia and Africa are using the AI-based tools to make themselves way more productive than before.
DETROW: You talk about those in your writing that you've recently published. You also raise really serious specific concerns, and some of the things that you are flagging are a little different than some of the things we've heard in recent days. You're not just talking about models going rogue, cyberattacks, things like that. You're talking about society-wide inequities. Can you walk us through some of these specific scenarios that you have become worried about?
GATES: Well, I think everybody's taxonomy of the concerns is pretty much the same. There's, you know, the biosecurity, cybersecurity. There's the job market and how AI, including future humanoid robots, will affect the job market. There's the psychosocial effects of kids or even adults having a dependence on the AI for their relationships. And finally, there's the issue of control. Will the AIs either be under control of bad people or out of human control in a way that's detrimental to all of humanity?
And so, believe it or not, we have to address all of those challenges that - I call that minimizing the bad, while we accelerate the very positive things. And so the billion-dollar announcement from the Gates Foundation - where we're going to make sure African languages are very highly accurate, which they're not yet today - that's about accelerating the good uses of AI into health, agriculture and education.
DETROW: Given that, what was your response when President Trump said earlier this week that he did not see a role for the federal government regulating it? And he said, "the only control or guardrails," and this is a quote, "that AI needs is a strong and smart, high-IQ president."
GATES: I wish it was that simple. This is a technology that was not developed really with government R&D, and so unlike rockets and nuclear weapons, where the government has tons of people who understand how quickly it's moving, here the federal government, as big and as smart as it is, is really playing catch-up. And so they have to deepen their expertise in biosecurity and cybersecurity. My memo was a rallying cry that people in universities, people in nonprofits and the government get more engaged in how we accelerate the good and minimize the bad. So I think as the U.S. government deepens its expertise, the message to the president will be these are, in fact, very, very serious problems that should not be taken lightly.
DETROW: And in the meantime, the main focus is on whether the AI giants self-regulate. And that's something I was interested to hear your take on because I think you probably understand the Sam Altmans and the Dario Amodeis more than anybody else in the world. If an outsider had warned you to slow down when you were building Microsoft in the '80s and '90s, would you have listened?
GATES: Well, fortunately, you know, nobody ever said that Microsoft Word, you know, was a problem because somebody could type something rude or a ransom note, you know? Yes, it is very surprising that in my comments on AI, I am saying this is a case where going full speed ahead is not the complete answer. My whole life, I've always said, you know, more PCs, more internet. You know, I'm - I believe innovation can solve almost every problem. But this is such a dual-sided technology that here some degree of slowing down may be important.
And I - you know, I think the industry is not the issue here. The issue is getting all of the rest of society, who really controls these trade-offs, to get them up to speed and so that, without reducing the good stuff significantly, we can make sure to minimize the - those five, all significant, areas of potential harm.
DETROW: I did want to ask, as we talk about these potential solutions, I did - felt like I need to ask you about your association in the past with Jeffrey Epstein because the Gates Foundation has been such a major player on policy. I'm wondering if you are concerned, if you feel like its ability to impact these future conversations, to be in the room to make decisions was harmed in any way by this association.
GATES: Well, certainly, I'm very regretful that I spent time with Epstein. I really appreciated the opportunity to go in front of the Congress and go through, you know, meeting by meeting during that three-year period that ended in 2014, what my interactions with him were. You know, I made it clear what I did do. I did spend time with him, which was a mistake. You know, I never had a social relationship, went to an island, made any payments. So I - you know, people should look at that. There are many reasons - you know, I am a billionaire who's benefited from technology. You know, so hopefully I'm just one voice of many. But I tried in my memo to say, yeah, you can say that I'm not the perfect messenger, although I'm not sure who is.
DETROW: And on AI, whether it's preventing the worst or putting the guardrails in place or making sure it's distributed in a broader way, how much time do you think we have to get these changes in place before it's too late?
GATES: I think the sooner we say that models need to not be usable by bioterrorists, the better. The threshold of being capable of aiding bioattacks and cyberattacks, that is being crossed right now. And I know that the models that will come out later this year are far more powerful. And so there really isn't time to spare.
DETROW: That was Bill Gates, philanthropist and entrepreneur. Thank you so much for talking to us.
GATES: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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