Bill Gates on AI: We have to stay ahead of the bad guys

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stressed that it is essential to ensure that bad actors don’t get ahead of the “good guys” when it comes to advancing artificial intelligence (AI). 

During a fireside chat at The Economic Club of New York Thursday evening, Gates argued that we need to stay ahead of people with ill intent, such as those who are trying to utilize the technology for cyber crimes, bioterrorism and even physical weapons.  

“You’d like to have the good guy defense . . . stay ahead of the bad guy offense,”  he said. 

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Still, despite the potential harm that could come from this technology, Gates admitted that he is “more optimistic about AI because of the near term benefits” it can provide. 

In fact, Gates believes it’s “the most profound change of this era” and even more revolutionary than digitization. 

It’s far from the first time Gates has expressed optimism over the development of AI. He previously stated in a blog post on his website, GatesNotes, that the evolution of AI “is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone.” 

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In the March post, he said “industries will reorient around it,” and “businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it.” One of them being the very company he co-founded in 1975. Gates has a net worth of $117 billion, according to Forbes. 

Microsoft – which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI – recently secured a non-voting board seat with the group after it fired and re-hired Sam Altman who was just named Time’s CEO of the year. The tech-giant announced earlier this year it will invest as much as $10 billion in OpenAI, extending collaborations between the two companies to include AI supercomputing and research, while enabling both to independently commercialize the resulting advanced AI technologies. 

This week, rival Google upped the ante with an artificial intelligence  upgrade. Gemini 1.0, the company’s first version, has been optimized into three different sizes: Gemini Ultra, the largest and most capable of highly complex tasks; Gemini Pro, best for scaling across a wide range of tasks; and Gemini Nano, the most efficient for on-device tasks.

Amazon and Meta are making their own investments, as is IBM. 

Its chatbot Bard is now using Gemini Pro for advanced reasoning and understanding, which the company says is Bard’s greatest upgrade since its launch. 

FOX Business’ Breck Dumas and Greg Norman contributed to this report.