Bill Gates Says Pauses in AI 'Won't Solve Challenges'

April 4, 2023

minute read

A pause in artificial intelligence development will not be able to "resolve the challenges" that lie ahead, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said in a first public statement since his open letter sparked a debate about the future of artificial intelligence.

‍

Rather than focusing on how best to use the developments in AI, the technologist-turned-philanthropist said that he would prefer to focus on what can be done with them as he was unsure how a pause would work globally.

‍

His interview with Reuters comes after an open letter, which was released last week and was signed by Elon Musk and more than 1,000 AI professionals, called for an immediate halt to the development of systems "more powerful" than those supported by Microsoft (MSFT.O). The brand-new GPT-4 from OpenAI is capable of writing songs, summarizing large files, and having human-like conversations.

‍

In their letter, the experts, including Apple (AAPL.O) co-founder Steve Wozniak, said in their opinion that there should be an assessment of the possible risks and benefits that could occur.

‍

“I do not think asking one particular group to take a break is going to solve the challenges,” Gates said on Monday.

‍

"The benefits of these things are clear to see. However, what needs to be done is to identify the areas in which they have difficulty."

‍

With its multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, Microsoft has sought to outpace its competitors.

‍

While Gates is currently focused full-time on the philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he has always been a big advocate of artificial intelligence and described it as a revolution like the Internet and mobile phones.

‍

He expressed his belief that AI is able to be used as an effective tool to curb some of the worst inequities in the world in a blog that he also published a day before the open letter, titled "The Age of AI has begun".

‍

Furthermore, he said in the interview that any pause would be difficult to implement due to the details involved.

‍

It is not clear to me who they are saying could stop, and whether or not every country in the world could agree to stop, or why they would want to stop," he stated. "It is true, however, that there are a number of different viewpoints in this area.