Bill Gates on the SI Transition: About 20 Tumultuous Years Ahead, With Cyber and Job Shocks in Two to Three
Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and chair of the Gates Foundation, said in an interview on The Verge's Decoder podcast published on October 22 that the transition brought by super intelligence would last about 20 years, calling that "a reasonably safe number." "Even in the very best case of how we manage AI, this is going to be as tumultuous a period as there's been in human history," he said.
Gates said his big concern is that 20-year transition period, with its winners and losers and a lot of disruption, which society has to get through in order to reach what he called a period of abundance. In that era, robots could build houses, grow food and do surgery, unless the world chooses to massively slow down or stop SI development.
The damage starts much sooner, he said. Within two to three years, he expects significant negative effects from SI-driven cyberattacks and in the job market. White-collar work such as telesales and accounting goes first, he said, because "there isn't some mountaintop of cognition that the AI does not achieve."
He also suggested society could split: some people would live at the technology frontier, while others, like the Amish, would choose not to live at the technological frontier. In August, Gates published an essay, "The turbulent AI era is here," arguing that the choices made now are critical; the interview is part of a months-long series of public remarks on SI risk. According to The Verge, Gates does not consider himself an SI doomer, but he says the technology remains extremely dangerous.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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