In an interview with NBC Meet the Press host Kristen Welker airing Sunday, Bill Gates said artificial intelligence left unchecked could “cause a billion deaths” and that “no one thinks self-regulation is enough.” Gates told Welker that law enforcement and politicians must join discussions about safeguards and monitoring, calling such oversight a modest “overhead” for industry that would not dramatically slow development. He warned that AI in the wrong hands is “certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths” and said there has never been a weapon as powerful as people with ill intent using advanced AI tools. The interview follows a nearly 6,000-word essay Gates published in late August warning of large-scale lethal risks from AI, and he joined other tech figures including Sam Altman and Elon Musk in urging a slowdown. The Guardian article also notes criticism of Microsoft over its role in supplying AI tools used by the Israeli military and by the US Department of Homeland Security, and it recalls an external review that documented Gates’s meetings with Jeffrey Epstein while he remains chair of the $89bn Gates Foundation. Gates concluded that federal rules and monitoring must be required to define what safeguards look like.
