Bill Gates tells Meet the Press AI is powerful enough to 'cause a billion deaths' and self-regulation is not enough
Axios (corroborated by Bloomberg, Forbes and Newsweek)·low signal
In excerpts NBC released September 25 ahead of Sunday's Meet the Press, Gates said 'AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that... cause a billion deaths' and 'there's never been a weapon as powerful'. He called for laws, mandatory monitoring and government-enforced safeguards instead of lab self-regulation. The comments came a day before OpenAI's agent-incident disclosures.