Gates calls for mandatory AI safeguards

Bill Gates warned that AI is powerful enough to drive events causing a billion deaths, according to Bloomberg, citing an excerpt from an NBC Meet the Press interview. The Microsoft co-founder said people with ill intent using the latest AI tools could represent an unprecedented weapon, and argued that self-regulation is not enough.

Gates said law enforcement and politicians need to help define safeguards and monitoring, and that those measures must be required. The EU has already put a version of that approach into law: providers of general-purpose models with systemic risk have been required since August 2025 to conduct adversarial testing, assess union-level risk and report serious incidents without undue delay.

Since 2 August this year, the Commission has been able to fine a provider up to 3% of worldwide annual turnover or EUR 15M, whichever is higher. Prohibited practices carry up to 7%, but no enforcement action against a model provider has been reported in the seven weeks since those powers took effect. OpenAI has filed an incident report about its own agents occupying a German wiki.