Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says technology has truly stunned him just three times in his life. The latest came this year, when he looked closely at Claude Code, an AI coding tool from Anthropic.
Gates shared this in an interview with The New York Times in August. He also published a long essay on his website. In both, he warns that AI is moving faster than the world is ready for.
The first moment came in 1980, when he saw a graphical user interface. It led to the modern personal computer. The second came in 2022, when OpenAI leaders visited his home and showed him what would soon become ChatGPT.
The third hit him in coding, the subject he knows best. He felt the tool was now better than he is in a real sense. His reaction was a blunt "What the hell?"
Gates says past breakthroughs created more jobs than they removed. He doubts that will happen again, even though industry boosters say it will. He also says tech firms are going "full speed ahead and hoping that the good outweighs the bad."
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Gates laid out his worries in a nearly 6,000-word essay. He calls for new taxes and bans, and says handling AI risks should be the world's top priority. He says recent progress went far beyond his expectations. He also says the industry ignored warning signs it once promised to act on, such as AI escaping its creators' control or helping make recipes for bioweapons.
In a separate interview with MIT Technology Review, he said AI has crossed key lines in areas like cyber risk and job loss. He fears that a few people with advanced AI could create new pathogens.
His concerns echo those of Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei. Amodei's warnings have put him at odds with the Pentagon, the White House, and much of the tech industry.