Bill Gates Disagrees With Musk’s AI Pause, Believes Tech’s Consequences Won’t Be As ‘Grim’ As Anticipated
Jason Cohen on July 13, 2023
Microsoft founder Bill Gates advocated against a pause on artificial intelligence (AI) development, as proposed by billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk and others, in a recent blog post.
Gates wrote that society should refrain from attempting to halt the advancement of AI, seeming to reference a pause on AI experiments that technologists such as Musk have called for, according to the blog post he published. Further, he countered common predictions regarding the future impact of AI, asserting that it will not be as “grim” or as “rosy” as portrayed by some.
“We should not try to temporarily keep people from implementing new developments in AI, as some have proposed,” Gates wrote. Musk, AI researchers and prominent individuals such as Steve Wozniak suggested a six-month moratorium on massive AI experiments, emphasizing concerns such as job automation and propaganda, according to an open letter they published in March.
Gates addressed these concerns in his blog, but argued a pause is not ideal because continued development can help protect against the most dangerous outcomes for AI.
“Government and private-sector security teams need to have the latest tools for finding and fixing security flaws before criminals can take advantage of them,” Gates wrote. “Cyber-criminals won’t stop making new tools. Nor will people who want to use AI to design nuclear weapons and bioterror attacks. The effort to stop them needs to continue at the same pace.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping told Gates he is open to letting American AI companies such as Microsoft into China at a meeting in June, according to Reuters. The company is backing OpenAI, the creator of the popular chatbot ChatGPT, with billions of dollars according to Microsoft.
Musk announced the founding of an AI company on Wednesday. “Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality,” he tweeted. He also added the company name to his Twitter bio.
“I think we should be cautious with AI, and I think there should be some government oversight because it is a danger to the public,” Musk told Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson in an April Fox News interview.
The Gates Foundation did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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