Bill Gates has issued a stark warning about artificial intelligence, saying we are not preparing adequately for what it will do. He claims that “in terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice.”
“If the world takes the right steps AI will be a force for good and leave everyone better off,” Gates wrote in an essay published on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, right now we are not preparing for it. I don’t see evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. There is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era.”
He says part of the reason for that is that people “underestimate the extent of the impact AI will have.” He marks that down to a couple of reasons: (1) AI models still make mistakes, and (2) analogies to the effects of past innovations are misleading.
As far as the first reason, Bill Gates points out, “the reliability problem is being fixed quickly.” The second reason, however, is a little more difficult to remedy.
“We have no experience with a technology that can be adopted quickly or that can think and move like a human,” he wrote. “When the PC came along, it took twenty years to significantly change how we worked because the software had to be developed, the price had to come down, and people had to learn how to use the tools and incorporate them into their business processes. AI, on the other hand, runs on the devices we already have, and it uses natural language. We don’t have to adapt to it because it can adapt to us. It can watch the same training video that is used to train human workers and learn from existing data.”
Gates also pointed out another issue with the coming AI era
“Because it can see, listen, speak, and reason and will eventually do physical work just as smoothly as any human, it will not just affect one sector,” he warned. “AI will take on work in law, customer service, medicine, software, and manufacturing. It will hit these industries rapidly, over the course of a decade rather than a few generations. There will be some new jobs, but without the right policies there will be far fewer than exist today.”
He said if there was a credible plan for slowing down AI advances globally, he would probably support it, but he doesn’t think that will happen. There is simply too much at stake.
So, he writes, “To make sure we maximize the positive effects of this unprecedented technology and minimize the bad so we are better off overall, we need to understand both the benefits and the risks.”
Gates goes on to single out “three big risks.” They are (1) Many jobs will disappear forever, (2) AI will empower people (and perhaps AIs) to do more harm, and (3) AI could stunt our kids’ development and replace human relationships.
On the plus side, he says, “AI can accelerate innovation in the world’s toughest technical challenges: providing reliable clean energy for everyone, combating climate change, growing enough food, eradicating diseases, and more.”
He also shared his message to leaders about how they handle artificial intelligence.
“You have a chance to act now, before unemployment rises sharply, communities are hurting, and public trust has eroded,” he wrote. “You can make sure that your government handles the problem holistically, rather than divvying it up into multiple bureaucratic fiefdoms. You can make sure AI benefits everyone. And you can work with other governments to meet this national and global challenge.”
Whether anyone listens is another cause for concern. Because so far, not many people have.