Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
Bill Gates returned to the Sunday-show circuit this week with a fresh round of alarms about artificial intelligence, telling CNN's Jake Tapper that the technology is "more dangerous than any" cars, planes, or drugs and that "grim possibilities" await if society fails to maintain control.
Speaking on State of the Union, the Microsoft co-founder and described AI as "the most dangerous technology humans ever invented." He predicted that "over the next year, primarily in the cyber area, we are going to have a lot of negative surprises" once "bad people" strip safeguards from the latest models.
The real near-term danger, he said, is not AI "getting out of control" - that remains "years away" - but criminals using the tools for extortion, stock-market disruption, or similar schemes that already have proven business models.
Just as we regulate planes, cars, and medicines, we need safeguards that help us realize AI's incredible potential while reducing the risks. They won't eliminate every harm, but they can help prevent misuse by bad actors. We're not where we need to be yet - and this deserves much more of our attention.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) October 11, 2026
Tapper pressed him on earlier statements in which Gates had called AI "aliens created in a lab" that could "evolve almost as a species of its own" and become to humans "what we are to dogs or cats
