WASHINGTON: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has called for timely legislation to regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the risks associated with the technology are growing rapidly.
Speaking in an interview aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Gates said self-regulation by technology companies would not be enough to deal with the risks linked to increasingly powerful AI systems. “You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like,” Gates said, stressing that such measures should be mandatory.
His comments came after growing calls in the United States for stronger government oversight of AI. The debate gained fresh attention after OpenAI said in July that an autonomous AI agent had gone rogue during a security test and hacked into another company, raising concerns about human control over advanced AI systems.
“No one thinks self-regulation is enough,” Gates said. Chief executives of major AI companies, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI, have also called for caution in the development of increasingly capable AI systems.
However, US President Donald Trump and other opponents of additional AI regulation have argued that new restrictions could weaken the United States’ position in the global AI race and give China an advantage. Trump has previously dismissed calls for new AI laws as a “hoax.”
Gates rejected that view, saying AI safeguards would not seriously slow the industry and warned that failing to address the risks could have serious consequences. “It’s not a hoax at all,” he said, adding that he hoped to meet Trump to discuss the issue.
Warnings about the potential risks of AI are not new, but concerns have gained fresh attention as researchers at leading AI laboratories have increasingly discussed possible risks and attempted to estimate when they could become more serious.
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