Bill Gates Warns AI Could Cause 'a Billion Deaths,' Urges Mandatory Regulation

Bill Gates has warned that artificial intelligence is powerful enough to trigger events that could result in a billion deaths, describing the combination of malicious actors and the latest AI tools as more dangerous than any weapon in history. The comments were made in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," scheduled to air the weekend of September 26, 2026.

Gates said self-regulation by the industry is not enough and that law enforcement and politicians need to be involved in defining safety and regulatory measures, which must be mandatory. He previously wrote in an August 2026 article that bad actors could use increasingly powerful AI tools to carry out cyberattacks, scams, disinformation campaigns, and large-scale disruption to hospitals, financial institutions, power grids, and government systems.

The warnings come amid escalating concerns in Silicon Valley about the potentially catastrophic risks of AI. In early September 2026, Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon resigned, accusing Anthropic and OpenAI of "gambling with our lives" by "accelerating toward superintelligent AI." Another Anthropic employee said he believed the probability of AI wiping out humanity within the next decade was higher than 10%. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei subsequently called for a slowdown in AI development, a proposal that was quickly supported by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk.