Less than two weeks after the Gates Foundation pledged $1 billion to expand global access to artificial intelligence, Bill Gates warned that the same technology could cause a billion deaths. The Microsoft co-founder wants Washington to restrain a tool his own philanthropy is paying to scale.
Gates will deliver the 'sky is falling' warning Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, according to excerpts released Friday by the network and reported by Axios.
"AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths," he is set to tell Kristen Welker in an interview airing Sunday.
"Even though it's pretty hard to get to 100%, there's never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools."
🚨 Bill Gates predicts that AI could “drive events that cause a billion deaths” pic.twitter.com/o1k6KqAkS4
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) September 25, 2026
The isolated clip does not indicate whether or not Gates couches that apocalyptic claim with an explanation of why, despite the alleged potential, it won't actually kill a billion people.
One would hope he would mention something about safeguards implemented by the companies. Especially when you consider that Gates has touted the many benefits of AI.
These latest comments follow an August memo in which he called AI more consequential than almost any technology in history and said it had the potential to be “a force for good and leave everyone better off.”
Before that, he was singing the praises of the Super Intelligence boom and the advances it would bring to medicine and education.
He hasn't been sitting on the sidelines either, offering only commentary.
This month his foundation put real money behind the tech — at least $1 billion over two years to expand AI in health, education, agriculture, and language data.
Gates Foundation bets $1B on AI to boost global health, agriculture and education https://t.co/RgmMXEM8N7
— GeekWire (@geekwire) September 15, 2026
“We can harness AI for good. But it won’t happen by accident,” wrote Gates. “[I]t requires a deliberate, specific commitment from government leaders and the companies developing the technology: to measure success not only by what AI can do for the most profitable users but by what it can do for the people who stand the most to gain.”
The Gates Foundation's $1 billion pledge followed partnerships earlier this year with OpenAI (a $50 million joint commitment) and Anthropic (a $200 million partnership over four years) to deploy the same class of tools in clinics, classrooms, and farm programs.
I don't know, man. Seems a little dicey to massively fund technology that, in the back of your mind, could kill a billion people. His comments, when stapled together with the new interview, do nothing to dissuade critics of his reputation as a geeky version of Thanos.
President Trump has dismissed sensational warnings against Super Intelligence as a coordinated effort to force the United States to impose onerous regulations on a technology with generational benefits while China continues to develop it.
Gates spent the year selling AI as the equalizer. Now he is selling it as a weapon. What changed?
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