{"id":92686,"date":"2026-08-28T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/?p=92686"},"modified":"2026-08-27T18:37:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T00:37:23","slug":"bill-gates-warns-a-i-is-more-dangerous-than-big-tech-will-admit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/bill-gates-warns-a-i-is-more-dangerous-than-big-tech-will-admit\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates warns A.I. is more dangerous than big tech will admit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Bill<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, is loudly warning that artificial intelligence poses a grave threat to jobs and human life, and that urgently addressing the risks should be \u201cthe world\u2019s top priority.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an hourlong interview with The New York Times last week, Mr. Gates said the tech industry was knowingly downplaying those threats because there was too much money on the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn private, people who understand how good this stuff is, and how much better it\u2019s getting, they\u2019re very worried,\u201d he said. But few tech executives, Mr. Gates said, are willing to publicly admit that. \u201cThey\u2019re now saying to each other: \u2018Hey, man, don\u2019t say that. It\u2019s bad for us \u2014 the next trillion dollars we\u2019re trying to raise.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday, Mr. Gates published a nearly 6,000-word essay on his personal website laying out his concerns about A.I. and offering solutions, such as new taxes and bans. He said he was motivated to speak now because recent improvements in A.I. had far surpassed his expectations and because the industry had ignored technology milestones \u2014 like A.I.\u2019s escaping the control of its creators or making recipes for bioweapons \u2014 that it once said would warrant more caution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re just full speed ahead and hoping that the good outweighs the bad,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Gates, 70, is the latest in a string of tech luminaries to call out the risks of A.I. as the industry spends trillions of dollars on new data centers, and as young A.I. companies edge toward some of the largest initial public offerings in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is taking his stand as he emerges from an extended period of scandal. Early this year, the release of the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s emails brought renewed attention to Mr. Gates\u2019s interactions with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Gates had to pull out of an A.I. conference in February, and testified for six hours in June before a House committee. Disclosures of his infidelity, combined with his 2021 divorce, have also badly damaged his reputation. He acknowledged that they were all \u201cmistakes\u201d of his own doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He appears more willing to step back into the spotlight after answering every question from the House Oversight Committee. \u201cI think people understand what I did do, what I didn\u2019t do and that I learn when I make mistakes,\u201d he said in the interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Gates conceded that he also might be a flawed messenger simply because of his vast wealth and history as Microsoft\u2019s aggressive chief executive. In a landmark federal case, Microsoft was found in 2000 to have repeatedly abused its monopoly during his watch. (Mr. Gates left the company\u2019s board of directors in 2020.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Mr. Gates avoided criticizing Microsoft or other companies by name, he argued that he was uniquely positioned to work on the A.I. issue. He is a technologist and industry insider who is no longer driven by the profit incentives of running a company, and he has spent decades addressing inequality through his philanthropic foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe irony of \u2018innovation lover is scared and says we\u2019re not ready and we\u2019re crossing thresholds,\u2019 maybe it\u2019s even more poignant,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Gates said technological advances had truly stunned him three times: In 1980 when he first saw a graphical user interface, which led to the modern personal computer. In 2022 when the leaders of OpenAI came to his house to demonstrate what would soon become ChatGPT. And this year when he looked closely at the advances being made by Claude Code, Anthropic\u2019s A.I. tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coding, Mr. Gates said, is the subject he knows best, and Claude\u2019s abilities shocked him. \u201cThe idea that now these things are in a meaningful sense better than I am is like: What the hell?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technological breakthroughs in the past created more jobs than they eliminated, Mr. Gates said. But he is in disbelief that industry boosters say that will happen again this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The A.I. era is \u201cutterly, absolutely, completely, totally different,\u201d he said. He acknowledged that this unpopular opinion (in tech circles) was \u201ca hell of a claim, and I\u2019m staking everything I know \u2014 everything \u2014 saying, \u2018Are you kidding?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said mass job losses, if not addressed, were inevitable because A.I. would spread across the economy and leave little room for one industry to absorb the refugees from another. The biggest tech companies in the world, including Microsoft, are racing to help corporate customers adopt A.I., which could replace many workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Gates said that companies were just responding to market incentives, but that those incentives might conflict with what was best for society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He proposed a new tax on A.I. use, known as a \u201ctoken tax,\u201d to make it more expensive to replace people and provide money to help those who do lose work. A token is a basic unit of A.I. computing. The idea of taxing it has gained some traction, including on Wall Street, as a way to increase the cost of using machines instead of human labor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some jobs, Mr. Gates said, should be prohibited from being replaced by A.I. \u2014 an idea he called \u201cHuman Reserved\u201d \u2014 because the role is deeply personal, like a caregiver, or the people in those jobs are unlikely to find new employment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He argued for new international agreements to set clear criteria to monitor and restrict extreme risks like bioterrorism. He said it could take only a few people with access to advanced A.I. to develop new pathogens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he would happily debate anyone who argued against mandatory reviews of any A.I. system that could be weaponized to make new molecules and unleash a pandemic. Mr. Gates added that he was dumbfounded by the kind of voluntary measures that the White House and industry leaders were developing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSelf-regulation on the most dangerous tool ever invented?\u201d he said incredulously. \u201cNo, thanks!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Gates said he was in a \u201cstate of shock\u201d as to why there was not more urgency on these issues. Many of his concerns echo those raised by the Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei, but Dr. Amodei\u2019s warnings have put him at odds with the Pentagon, the White House and much of the tech industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have people attacking the person who\u2019s the most open about the downsides,\u201d Mr. Gates said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(The Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with global health issues, Mr. Gates vowed to make his A.I. concern part of every conversation he had with world leaders. \u201cI only have two issues where I\u2019m going to say, \u2018Please think more about this, please care more about this,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Gates acknowledged that he was in an odd spot: He has arguably done as much as anyone in the world to evangelize for and shape the modern computer industry. But now he is warning that the technology it is creating presents global risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like bringing bad news to people, and I don\u2019t like saying that innovation may be a net negative,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that\u2019s where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n