Bill Gates urges AI regulation, warning of cyberattack and bioterror risks; senators split

Right · 1Bill Gates said in an interview with Ezra Klein this week that AI is already capable of helping a skilled adversary carry out a cyberattack on an economy or design a deadly bioweapon, and he called for urgent regulation. 1 Right · 1Gates said AI has crossed the threshold at which it could empower a bioterrorist to kill hundreds of millions, and that a cyberattack that scrambles bank accounts or shuts down the electric grid is possible today, according to a quote Hot Air embedded from the interview. 1 Right · 1He rejected the idea that AI companies can regulate themselves, saying, "This is the most dangerous thing that humans have ever gone near." 1

Right · 1Gates also questioned President Donald Trump's idea of using liability lawsuits to regulate AI, asking whether society should rely on liability law to keep people safe. 1 Right · 1On the AI race with China, Gates said neither country can win because both have what they need to keep developing the technology. He argued that government monitoring would not put the US significantly behind. 1 Right · 1The Hot Air writer, John Sexton, said Gates seemed too comfortable trusting China to use AI reasonably, given that China runs a surveillance state. He also noted that Gates had recently written a paper that rejected Bernie Sanders' proposal for the government to take 50 percent ownership of AI companies and proposed a tax on AI tokens instead. 1

Right · 1Fox News reported that senators were split over a separate Gates warning, made on NBC's "Meet the Press" last week, that AI could lead to "a billion deaths". 2 Right · 1Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called the warning "incredibly irresponsible" and "fear-mongering", and said it could fuel demands for regulation that benefit a handful of large AI companies at the expense of smaller competitors, which he described as regulatory capture. 2 Right · 1Cornyn also said the administration is "generally on the right track in not trying to put a heavy hand on this technology". Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said the US should develop AI and stay ahead of adversaries like China, but do so safely. 2

Right · 1Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said Gates' warning was less dire than some AI officials' suggestion of a 10 percent chance of wiping out humanity, but that it should be taken very seriously. He argued that intense competition means companies cannot be relied on to slow down voluntarily, so government safeguards are needed. 2 Right · 1Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., criticised Republicans, who control the House and Senate, for sending lawmakers home rather than acting on AI, and said President Trump does not want to do anything about it. Many Democrats had urged Congress to stay in session to pass safeguards before recess ahead of the midterm elections. 2 Right · 1Fox News noted that Trump has pushed back on calls to slow AI development, arguing that a rollback could give competitors such as China an advantage. It also noted that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have also sounded alarms about AI. 2