Bill Gates says it’s time to hit the AI panic button.
The technology has crossed dangerous thresholds in biology, cybersecurity, white-collar work, and human relationships, Gates said in an interview with Semafor.
His warning is a striking shift from three years ago, when he wrote that the coming “bumpy” AI job disruption would lead to a “manageable” transition and that the technology would help people work efficiently. Now, he says it will wreak economic catastrophe, with “far fewer” jobs than exist today, thanks to the speed of AI’s advancements and what he calls a non-existent response from government and tech leaders.
“I am in a state of shock that I’m sort of the first one saying, ‘This is crazy. This is insane,’” he said. “I’m just deafened by the silence.”
In a blog post published Wednesday, Gates asks technology and political leaders to respond more urgently to threats from AI — namely to create new policies to protect workers and to tax companies based on their use of it.
One of Gates’ fears about letting AI continue unchecked is that society will turn against it entirely, derailing its potential to improve humanity, particularly through advances in science and health. “What is the backlash going to be as these jobs go away?” he asked. “It’ll make the data center thing look like nothing.”
It is his first of several planned essays, Gates told Semafor, including one featuring a deeper analysis of biological risks from AI. “I wrote a whole book about how to avoid the next pandemic,” Gates said. “The bioterrorism risk is 50 times the natural pandemic risk now.”
Gates said that in private, some technologists agree with his current stance, including Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “Mustafa feels the same way today that he felt when he wrote the book,” Gates said, referring to Suleyman’s warning in The Coming Wave, published in 2023, which says society was unprepared for the sweeping changes AI is about to bring. “He’s very, very glad I’m writing the memo.”
Other prominent leaders, such as Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, have also sharpened their warnings. Hassabis recently proposed a federally overseen frontier-AI standards body modeled partly on FINRA, funded largely by industry, and empowered to test advanced models before release. He said the system could eventually be made mandatory and coordinate a slowdown among frontier labs if necessary.
In 2023, Gates, along with Suleyman, Hassabis, and hundreds of other tech and policy leaders, signed a statement saying the risk of extinction from AI should be treated as a global priority alongside pandemics and nuclear war.