Asger Risom
Bill Gates says AI could speed progress, but he warns the same tools could help bad actors build a bioterror weapon that triggers the next global pandemic.
Bill Gates says AI will change society more than anything humans have created, but his optimism comes with sharp caveats about misuse and disruption.
One warning stands out: he argues that an even greater risk than a natural pandemic is a non-government group using open-source AI tools to design a bioterrorism weapon.
A new threat model
Gates links the concern to a lesson from Covid-19: preparation gaps magnify suffering. He says that if the world had prepared better, the damage would have been far smaller.
Now, he suggests the barrier to dangerous capability could drop if powerful biological design tools are paired with broadly accessible AI.
Experts share concern
Independent research communities have raised similar alarms. A National Academies report has said AI can boost biosecurity, but that monitoring and mitigation are needed to reduce the risk of misuse in developing harmful biological agents.
Policy analysts at CNAS have also outlined how advances in AI could evolve biological security risks, pushing governments to treat prevention and controls as urgent priorities.
Beyond bioterror
Gates flags a second near-term challenge: job disruption, particularly as AI boosts productivity in knowledge work and starts reshaping demand in areas like software development.
His bottom line is governance. He argues societies need deliberate choices about how AI is developed, deployed, and overseen, so benefits scale without opening the door to catastrophic misuse.
Sources: gatesnotes, National Academies, CNAS
