AI could trigger a pandemic worse than COVID-19, Bill Gates says

Tengrinews.kz — Artificial intelligence (AI) could trigger a pandemic far more dangerous than COVID-19, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said on November 4 while speaking at the Future of AI Summit, according to Oninvest.
According to Gates, the capabilities of modern AI models are such that “the potential for both benefit and harm cannot be overstated.” He sees the most immediate danger in malicious actors using AI to create biological weapons or launch cyberattacks on digital infrastructure.
The risk is heightened by the fact that built-in safeguards and monitoring systems can be removed from some publicly available open models. Gates stressed that the scale of damage from a biological incident involving AI could be “significantly worse” than the coronavirus pandemic, which has been linked to around 15 million deaths in 2020–2021.
Gates believes self-regulation of the AI industry will not work.

“Once several companies are involved, the only way to solve the problem is to take it to the government level,” the American billionaire said.

However, in his view, international efforts to regulate AI are being slowed by inaction from the White House.

“There is not much point in acting if the United States is not involved. So in a sense, we are at an impasse… The only question is how many more bad events have to happen before they change their position,” the Microsoft co-founder said.

In September, Gates said that AI is powerful enough to trigger events that could lead to “a billion deaths” and insisted that governments must play a mandatory role in developing protective measures.