Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, has raised the alarm the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
He cautioning that if not regulated, it could disrupt the entire human existence: triggering massive lay-offs, reduction in human cognition, critical thinking, provide access to information on manufacturing bioweapons, bombs, and so on.
“Even criminals with very limited skills will be able to target victims at every scale,” Mr Gates wrote in a 6,000 word-essay on Wednesday.
Already, former Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria admitted to using AI to build weapons and develop tactics against the military.
Mr Gates outlined concerns about AI, which he acknowledged has numerous benefits, that could harm the human population by working against their interests, if not significantly limited.
He said the world was grossly underprepared for the turbulence that AI was bringing to human history.
“Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history,” Mr Gates wrote in the 5,784-word missive. “Right now,we are not preparing for it. I don’t see evidence that leaders, experts and communities are confronting the challenges.”
He noted that AI would render many humans redundant, doing the same jobs that humans can do only at far cheaper rates. He said AI now has the capacity to work more efficiently than humans with zero to minimal errors.
Mr Gates said many companies would adopt AI, replace humans with systems that will trigger massive unemployment in entry-level and mid-level roles in jobs such as software engineering, customer care, data analysis and so others. He included healthcare, stating that AI has the ability to triage patients.
While netizens globally are sharing viral videos of robots dancing, Mr Gates there would be an influx of advanced robots programmed to lift heavy weights and make construction work easy, which would consequently, render construction workers jobless.
“It will be able to function on its own without a human checking in on it,” wrote Mr Gates.
The tech mogul also warned that critical thinking was at risk.
“This would be the worst possible time for humans to lose their critical thinking skills,” he stated. “In an era of deepfakes and misinformation that can be tailored to you individually, the ability to tell what is true from what is not becomes an essential life skill.”
He insisted that AI was good and would benefit the agriculture sector particularly for low-income countries. He also noted healthcare sector would profit immensely from AI in prompt diagnosis and research literature coordination.
“Many small American hospitals lack on-site specialists who can quickly diagnose a patient during a life-threatening emergency. In those places, AI could make sure a heart attack is caught in time,” Mr Gates said.
Mr Gates proposed heavy taxes on AI tokens and bots to delay organisations from terminating human labour. He said those taxes could be used to re-skill workers who lose their jobs to AI.
According to the Microsoft founder, money generated from the taxes will boost the income tax revenue and inevitably reduce when people start losing their jobs.
He also admonished the governor to create policies that would ban AI adoption in certain sectors.
Mr Gates did not use AI to write the 12-page essay, Wall Street Journal quoted Mr Gates’ representative as saying.
