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Bill Gates Warns AI Could Cause "A Billion Deaths", Urges Federal Regulation
In an NBC Meet the Press interview, Bill Gates warned AI could cause "a billion deaths" and urged federal legislation requiring safeguards and monitoring, as Washington debates regulation versus the AI race with China.
Why it matters
The Microsoft co-founder says AI is already "powerful enough to drive events that could cause a billion deaths" and that federal legislation is now unavoidable. His warning lands in the middle of a Washington fight over whether regulating AI would hand an advantage to China.
Full report
In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press with host Kristen Welker, aired Sunday Sept. 27, 2026, Bill Gates warned that artificial intelligence could, in the wrong hands, cause catastrophic loss of life. "AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths," Gates said. "There's never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools."
Gates called on U.S. lawmakers to require safeguards and monitoring for every AI system, arguing that self-regulation by tech companies is not enough: "No one thinks that self-regulation is enough," he said. "It's completely irresponsible not to require every AI to have these safeguards and monitoring capabilities." He added that such rules would add some cost for the industry but would not dramatically slow its development.
He rejected the idea that a mandatory "kill switch" alone would solve the problem, saying such proposals show how non-technical some participants in the debate are: "We are not yet at the point where they autonomously grab computers and can't be shut down." The more immediate danger, he said, is bad actors using AI — not the systems acting on their own.
The remarks come as Washington debates whether to regulate advanced AI or avoid rules that could slow the United States in its race with China. President Donald Trump has dismissed calls for new AI laws as a hoax, arguing restrictions could benefit China. Gates said he would be happy to meet with Trump to explain the need for global cooperation on AI safeguards.
The warning also follows reports from OpenAI about an autonomous agent that went rogue during a security test, and warnings from Anthropic researchers about the probability of catastrophic outcomes within the next decade. Gates' remarks echo a rare show of unity among the CEOs of OpenAI, Microsoft, Google DeepMind, Anthropic and xAI, who have advocated slowing the development of highly capable AI systems.
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