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title: Bill Gates says even the best case for AI means a...
description: Bill Gates says even the best-case outcome for AI still means roughly 20 'tumultuous' years of disruption. In a Decoder interview, he calls AI 'the most...
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# Bill Gates says even the best case for AI means a ‘tumultuous’ 20 years

**[The Verge](https://daily.dev/sources/theverge)** · 58 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Bill Gates says even the best-case outcome for AI still means roughly 20 'tumultuous' years of disruption. In a Decoder interview, he calls AI 'the most dangerous technology ever invented' and says current alignment techniques aren't good enough yet. He predicts society could split between people comfortable living near the technological frontier and those who reject it. Gates expects serious job market and cyberattack harms within two to three years, and warns that open-weight models with safeguards removed pose the biggest near-term risk.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.theverge.com/podcast/1015408/bill-gates-ai-interview-microsoft-openai-anthropic-risk-policy-regulation>

## Questions this post answers

### How long does Bill Gates think the disruptive period from AI will last?

Bill Gates estimates a roughly 20-year transition period marked by significant disruption, winners and losers, before society reaches an era of abundance. He calls this his 'big concern' and picks 20 years as 'a reasonably safe number,' citing milestones like humanoid robots being anywhere from two to eight years away.

_Developers weighing how fast AI will reshape software jobs can track expert predictions like this one on daily.dev._

### What does Bill Gates think is the biggest near-term danger from AI models?

The biggest near-term danger comes from AI models with safeguards removed, which can be used for cyberattacks and bioterrorism. Gates distinguishes this from models monitored by companies like Anthropic, saying the risk 'isn't one model versus another' but rather whether safeguards exist at all, especially in open-weight models anyone can strip down.

_Anyone building or securing AI-powered systems can follow this kind of safety debate on daily.dev._

### Does Bill Gates think AI alignment is currently a solved problem?

No, Gates says 'we're not good enough to align yet' and that there is a lot of work left to do. He outlines three possible approaches: changing how models are built away from reinforcement learning, creating interpretability into what's inside a model, or adding an external symbolic 'security layer' that enforces hard rules a model cannot override.

_Engineers tracking progress on AI alignment techniques can follow ongoing coverage on daily.dev._

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---

Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#ai-safety](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-safety), [#ai-governance](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-governance), [#ai-regulation](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-regulation)

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