Bill Gates published a long essay arguing that modern AI has passed multiple danger thresholds and is pressing the point publicly in a new essay.
Gates, the philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder, said the thresholds include risks in health, cybersecurity, social manipulation and labour markets, and warned those dangers now require policy action bio-capabilities.
“We’ve crossed the threshold,” Gates said, summing up his view that several capabilities once theoretical are now real and visible, a warning he is taking to leaders and the public.
He proposed reserving some roles for human workers and levying charges on AI that replaces labour, ideas he framed as human-reserved jobs and taxes on robots and tokens.
Gates singled out biological misuse as especially alarming, saying bioterrorism risk is roughly 50 times more scary than a natural pandemic and urging monitoring of models that can design novel molecules.
The essay marks an escalation from his earlier, more optimistic tone this year and has him briefing industry, government and civil-society figures as part of a campaign of essays and meetings the first of multiple.
