Bill Gates says to prepare for 20 years of ‘tumultuous’ AI disruption

Today, I’m talking to Bill Gates, cofounder and former CEO of Microsoft and chairman of the Gates Foundation.

You may have noticed Bill in the news more lately — he’s been on something of a tour for the past few months, ever since publishing an essay in late August titled “The turbulent AI era is here.

The choices we make now are critical.” In his piece, Gates ratcheted up his rhetoric around AI safety, writing that “even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history.” In interviews since , Gates has called AI “the most dangerous thing that humans have ever gone near,” and that AI “makes nuclear weapons look like nothing.” It is clear he does not think the current policy response from the White House, or the lack of coordinated efforts from the AI industry itself, is sufficient to combat this threat.

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So I wanted to know: Is Bill Gates an AI doomer? I also had a series of questions downstream from what he’s been arguing about AI.

How can we ever hope to control AI, and align it to humanity, if we can’t even agree on what it is and whether it’s conscious ? How would you even technically construct a solution to alignment that could be enforced, not just for closed-source models but open-source ones, too? Bill gave us a big chunk of his time to dig into these issues with him, and the resulting conversation is a really illuminating one.

He thinks we need to prepare for roughly two decades of AI disruption, and he says this period could be so painful it might split society in two — between people comfortable living near the technological frontier, and those who reject it.

We also talked about the labor considerations, the nihilism of younger generations toward technological progress, and what should make us hopeful about the future.

This is a deep one.

Okay: Bill Gates, the cofounder and former CEO of Microsoft.

Here we go.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.