Bill Gates, "Request to Pause AI Development, Problems Unresolved"

"Development Halted, Concrete Implementation Difficult"
"Uncertain If All Countries Will Agree to Halt"

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft (MS), recently argued that the call by AI experts, including Elon Musk, to temporarily halt the development of cutting-edge AI due to concerns that "AI could pose a serious risk to humanity" will not solve the problem.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft (MS)
[Photo by Reuters]

On the 3rd (local time), Gates stated in an interview with a foreign media outlet, "I don't think the problem will be solved just because a certain group requests a temporary pause in development." He said it is more desirable to focus on how to best utilize AI advancements and expressed that he cannot understand how a global development halt could be implemented.

Gates also explained, "Since it is clear that (AI chatbots) have tremendous benefits, what we need to do is identify the problematic areas." He added, "It is not easy to specifically enforce a development pause," and said, "I really don't know who would be responsible for the pause they are talking about, whether all countries worldwide would agree to it, and the reasons for the pause."

On the 21st of last month, Gates posted a blog titled "The Era of AI Has Begun." In this post, he praised AI as a revolutionary technological innovation comparable to the internet and mobile phones. He also emphasized his belief that AI could be used to reduce the worst inequalities seen in developing countries in areas such as healthcare, climate change, and education.

Earlier, on the 28th of last month, the U.S. nonprofit organization Future of Life Institute (FLI) issued an open letter signed by over 1,100 prominent figures, urging "all AI labs to immediately pause the development of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months."

The letter was signed by Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Emad Mostaque, CEO of Stability.AI, the developer of the image-generating AI 'Stable Diffusion,' Pinterest CEO Evan Sharp, and Yuval Harari, a world-renowned bestselling author and professor at Hebrew University, among others.

MS, co-founded by Gates, is leading the generative AI competition based on its investment in OpenAI, which sparked the global AI craze with ChatGPT. MS has committed to investing a total of $10 billion (approximately 13.1 trillion won) in OpenAI over the coming years. Last month, MS announced plans to integrate AI chatbots into its Bing search engine and incorporate AI technology into its productivity tool MS 365 Copilot to further enhance work efficiency.