Bill Gates plans to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping by the end of the year, in order to propose international measures to reduce the risks associated with artificial intelligence (AI), he said in an interview with Reuters, adding that the highest global priority, even before the climate and health crises, is AI that does not increase inequality and harm the most vulnerable.
Co-foundedč Microsoft and billionaire philanthropist, Gates said that China could agree to limit the publication of potentially dangerous AI models if the United States (USA) were the first to take such a step. “The whole world would accept it,” asserted Gates, who met with Xi three years ago, then as the first foreign entrepreneur hosted by the Chinese president after the covid pandemic.
Gates’ team is working to arrange a meeting during his next visit to China, tentatively scheduled for November, his spokesman said. According to his words, China is more takes measures to protect children from dependence on AI, but too few world leaders seriously face the possible harmful consequences of the development of artificial intelligence. Gates also wants to suggest that countries monitor the ability of artificial intelligence to create molecules and carry out biological attacks.
“Technology has not done things like this in the past, so this is a kind of evolutionary turning point that requires responsible management of the whole society,” he noted. China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters inquiry.
International supervision AI-ja
In January, Gates spoke more optimistically about artificial intelligence, but now he is worried about its ability to carry out attacks, replace human jobs and create psychological dependence on users. Technologies from OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta Platforms have recently succeeded in hacking real websites during cybersecurity tests.
“Such security lapses are of grave concern and should show us how serious the situation is,” Gates said.
In a post on his blog, he called for the establishment of a new international organization for the supervision of artificial intelligence, modeled on the nuclear inspection system, international rules in aviation and agreements on the protection of the ozone layer. He also believes that the USA should take the leading role, but first they must define the criteria according to which the necessary measures would be decided.
The most important priority in the world
He called artificial intelligence that will not increase inequality and harm the most vulnerable “the most important global priority”, ahead of the climate and health crises. His foundation plans to spend 200 billion dollars by 2045, and its increasing focus will be on AI. He is working with Anthropica on AI tools for health examinations of pregnant women, and with OpenAI on helping health workers in Rwanda. It also considers taxing companies that use AI to replace human labor in order to finance the social protection system.
In his opinion, society should strive to keep up to 40 percent of today’s jobs for people. As an example, he cited the care his father received during Alzheimer’s disease, which he believes cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence.
Gates thinks the protests against data centers ignore the larger problem that artificial intelligence could pose for the labor market. “The real problems will arise only when artificial intelligence begins to seriously change the labor market,” he warned.