Bill Gates shares his three biggest concerns about AI
Billionaire Bill Gates calls himself optimistic about the future of AI, but still has some concerns about the technology.
In the podcast On with Kara Swisher released on Apple Podcast on September 30, Bill Gates said the first concern about AI is that bad guys can use this technology to commit crimes on the Internet, bioterrorism and war.
“In that case, you think it’s just about making sure the good guys have AI in their hands to defend and counter. But to do that, you have to have the desire to move forward and not fall behind by getting access to this technology as early as possible,” the American billionaire said.
American billionaire Bill Gates (left). Photo: X/Bill Gates
The second concern is that the rapid pace of change in AI could put millions of people out of work. For example, he said, AI will become better and more reliable at diagnosing medical conditions if the training data is accurate. For teachers and other professionals, AI will help them offload repetitive tasks. Last year, Gates predicted that humans could work three days a week thanks to AI.
“If we freed all workers from work, we could shorten the work week, but the pace of change is quite scary,” he said.
There have been warnings that AI could lead to a reduction or loss of jobs. A HubSpot survey last year found that salespeople saved 2 hours and 15 minutes a day by using AI to automate manual tasks like meeting scheduling, note-taking, and data entry. And a 2023 report from Goldman Sachs said AI could cause “significant disruption” in the labor market, affecting as many as 300 million full-time jobs.
Gates' third concern is the "out of control" scenario of AI becoming too smart. This is an issue that many researchers and AI experts have warned about for years about the potential consequences of artificial superintelligence AGI surpassing humans, including a doomsday scenario.
However, Gates believes that AI can be controlled well if humans aim for beneficial goals. "My view is, if you've got the first two things under control, the third thing is actually not the hardest thing," Gates said.
According to Business Insider , last year, Michael Schwarz, an economist who now works at Microsoft, worried that "AI will be used by bad actors and cause real harm." Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said that AI is being developed in an optimistic scenario, but could also "create darkness for all of us."
Speaking of the present, Gates said he uses AI to jot down key points in meetings. “I think the AI feature I use the most is the meeting summary, which is built into Microsoft Teams. I use it a lot,” he told The Verge in early September. “Not only do I get a summary, but I can interact with it, like ask questions about the meeting. It’s really cool.”
Bao Lam
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