Stop being so (Micro)soft! Bill Gates hits back against AI critics like Elon Musk who warn tech will destroy humanity – saying ‘there’s huge benefits’
- Bill Gates did not sign the letter calling for a pause on AI for six months
- Gates said it would be best to identify ‘tricky areas’ instead of a full stop
- READ MORE: The sprint to perfect AI is the 21st century’s nuclear arms race
Bill Gates did not sign the letter with Elon Musk, which calls for the development of AI to stop for six months. Gates says the pause would not solve the challenges faced.
Bill Gates has criticized Elon Musk and more than 1,000 tech leaders who are calling for a pause in developing artificial intelligence due to fears it could destroy humanity.
The Microsoft founder said that pulling the plug on the growth of ChatGPT-like systems will ‘not solve the challenges,’ but industry leaders should focus on how to use the progress best.
The comments hit back at the open letter signed by Musk and his fellow AI critics calling for a six-month pause on developing AI.
‘I do not think asking one particular group to pause solves the challenges,’ Gates said Monday.
‘Clearly, there are huge benefits to these things… what we need to do is identify the tricky areas.’
He also said the details of any pause would be complicated to enforce.
‘I do not really understand who they are saying could stop, and would every country in the world agree to stop, and why to stop?’ Gates said. ‘But there are a lot of different opinions in this area.’
Microsoft, founded by Gates, has heavily invested in OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
In January, it was speculated Gates’s company invested an additional $10 billion in the startup to compete with Google in commercializing new AI breakthroughs.
Microsoft also added AI to its Bing search engine in February, incorporating ChatGPT powers.
The open letter was released last week. It was signed by over 1,000 tech leaders who fear AI will destroy humanity
Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak are some of the big names in the letter
Gates recently penned a blog post titled The Age of AI has Begun, where he detailed his belief that the technology is’as revolutionary as mobile phones and the internet.’
The Microsoft founder has spent billions of dollars bringing medical treatments to the developing world and believes AI tools are our biggest weapon against deadly diseases and viruses.
He believes ‘the rise of AI’ is poised to improve humanity, increase productivity, reduce worldwide inequalities, and accelerate the development of new vaccines.
The technology can discover new pathways to design drugs accordingly and spot errors otherwise missed by human eyes.
‘One of the Gates Foundation’s priorities in AI is to make sure these tools are used for the health problems that affect the poorest people in the world, including AIDS, TB, and malaria,’ Gates shared in the post.
Musk has long been against AI, warning it will end humanity and is asking for a six-month pause. Kevin Baragona was one of the more than 1,000 leading experts who signed an open letter, calling for a pause on the ‘dangerous race’ to develop ChatGPT-like AI
He sees the AI race as the future, while Musk and others see it as the 21st century’s nuclear arms race.
Kevin Baragona was one of the more than 1,000 leading experts who signed an open letter on The Future of Life Institute, calling for a pause on the ‘dangerous race’ to develop ChatGPT-like AI.
Americans were wrestling with a similar idea, while developing the weapon of mass destruction – at the time it was dubbed ‘nuclear anxiety.’
‘It’s almost akin to a war between chimps and humans, Baragona, who signed the letter, told DailyMail.com
‘The humans obviously win since we’re far smarter and can leverage more advanced technology to defeat them.
‘If we’re like the chimps, then the AI will destroy us, or we’ll become enslaved to it.’
The fears come with the extraordinary rise of ChatGPT, which has taken the world by storm in recent months, passing leading medical and law exams that take humans nearly three months to prepare.
The powers of ChatGPT-like AI have sparked a civil war in Silicon Valley.
Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak signed the letter for an AI pause, while Gates and Google CEO Sundar Pichai did not.
‘While I can only speculate why Gates and Sundar didn’t sign the letter to pause advanced AI research, I think they didn’t because they’re signing the checks to expedite AI’s progress,’ Baragona said.
Like the invention of the atomic bomb in the 1940s, Baragona told DailyMail.com that ‘AI superintelligence is like the nuclear weapons of software.’
‘Many people have debated whether we should or shouldn’t continue to develop them,’ he continued.
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