Tech giant Microsoft is one of the many companies embracing AI. So it’s perhaps ironic that Microsoft’s co-founder – the multi-billionaire Bill Gates – has given a warning over its potential dangers.
Speaking in London this week, Gates called AI a ‘wonderful’ technology that can save humans from climate change and disease.
But he warned that it needs to be used ‘by people with good intent’, as it could be used by criminals ‘engaged in cyber attacks or political interference’.
Gates, one of the 10 richest humans in the world, said: ‘The defence has to be smarter than the offence. And both sides will use AI to up their game.’
Gates – who founded Microsoft with the late Paul Allen in 1974 – was speaking at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London on Thursday, which was also attended by Prince William.
‘AI is so important that we have to make sure it’s mostly being used by people with good intent,’ the businessman told Sky’s The World With Yalda Hakim.
‘So anytime you have a new technology it’s mostly used by teachers and doctors and scientists to help them be more effective.
‘If you have somebody who’s engaged in something like a cyber attack or political interference, AI could be used by them so you have to make sure the good guys are staying ahead.’
Gates said AI will act as a force for good for providing better healthcare and combatting climate change – specifically mentioning nuclear fusion energy as a clean alternative to fossil fuels.
‘[With] climate [change], some of the complex things like modelling fusion energy – thank goodness AI is going to make that far easier to do,’ he said.
AI helps us model things in the sciences – understand materials better, and catalysts, and how to make proteins.
‘AI, in every field of endeavour, will be accelerating innovation, whether that’s in medicine or helping with tutoring, education.’
Gates is ranked seventh on this year’s Forbes list of richest people in the world – behind the likes of SpaceX founder Elon Musk and French businessman Bernard Arnault.
Gates founded Microsoft with Allen after the two met at high school in Seattle in 1968. Both dropped out of university to found the company.
According to Allen’s memoir, he and Gates shared a passion for computers and used to go dumpster diving for print-outs of computer programme code.
He stepped down as Microsoft’s CEO in 2000, but there are continued suggestions that he has control over the firm’s overall direction behind the scenes.
According to a recent report from Business Insider, Gates has been ‘quietly orchestrating’ much of Microsoft’s AI revolution.
Microsoft is currently embracing AI wholeheartedly with products including its its AI-powered laptops and its Copilot chatbot.
The new line of Windows laptops feature an ‘AI button’ on the keyboard for quickly accessing the Copilot, a generative artificial intelligence helper.
Microsoft has also given financial backing to OpenAI, the California tech company that created chatbot sensation ChatGPT.