OPINION:
Twitter chief Elon Musk, along with 1,000 or so other tech leaders, called for a pause on the development of certain advanced artificial intelligence systems, warning that without a time-out to establish boundaries, society — nay, humanity itself — would suffer “profound” griefs.
And then came Bill Gates and his mocking pushback to these warnings.
No wonder. Just as Gates had positioned himself during the coronavirus chaos to scoop up scores of profits, so, too, he’s maneuvered in the AI industry.
Look at his COVID shot record, as penned by ClarkCountyToday.com: “The Big & Melinda Gates Foundation made 15 times its initial investment when the foundation sold its BioNTech shares at the height of their value in 2021.”
That — after Gates, aided by a fawning media, played the altruistic savior of humanity by promising more than $2 billion to fight COVID-19.
What a guy.
Now comes artificial intelligence.
Now comes Gates, casting capitalistic eyes at AI — which is strange in itself, given the billionaire’s love of all-things-China. But such is the doings of elitists; it’s all ‘do as I say, not as I do’ attitudes.
“Bill Gates Says [Machine Learning] AI Will Be Worth ’10 Microsofts,’” The Motley Fool reported in 2019.
That’s right; Gates claimed the inventor of “a breakthrough in artificial intelligence” that brought forward technology “so machines can learn” would yield profits and power 10 times what Microsoft unleashed. So he’s invested heavily in the field.
“[Gates] isn’t the head honcho of Microsoft anymore, but he still owns over 1% of the shares and makes about $300 million a year just from owning the stock,” OkDork.com wrote.
And lookie here, one of Microsoft’s blossoming, blooming, burgeoning investments is, da da dum, drumroll please: ChatGPT.
To the tune of $10 billion.
“Microsoft finally confirmed that they were extending the partnership with OpenAI, the maker of the revolutionary ChatGPT tool,” Forbes wrote this past January. “The tech giant didn’t give a financial figure, but it’s rumored that the investment will be $10 billion as Microsoft looks to accelerate the breakthroughs in AI to benefit the world.”
Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money.
Just as Gates rebuked notions that he was pushing for mass vaccination, speedy approval of vaccinations and the China model of COVID response for personal, financial benefits — no doubt he’s bucking any pauses to AI for similar reasons.
Musk, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, entrepreneur and 2020 presidential contender Andrew Yang, and even Israeli scholar and World Economic Forum insider Yuval Noah Harari, all said this of emerging artificial intelligence, in a open letter released by the Future of Life Institute: “[Developers are] locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predictions or reliably control.”
Another 1,000 signed the letter.
But Gates, in response, said this: Oh, fiddle sticks.
“I do not think asking one particular group to pause solves the challenges,” he said, the Daily Mail reported.
“Clearly, there are huge benefits to these things,” he also said, in reference to artificial intelligence and technology that teaches machines to teach themselves. “What we need to do is identify the tricky areas.”
No dip, Sherlock.
That’s what Musk and Wozniak and the 1,000 others who signed a letter calling for a slow-in-roll of AI development are trying to do — identify the “tricky areas” so as to control the “tricky areas.”
But clearly, Gates has money more in mind than consequences.
He wants to use AI, among other things, to develop drugs — vaccines — medical shots — to feed into the mouths and jab into the arms of people the world over. It’ll be a sort of double whammy investment return for Gates, given his financial interest in vaccine development and simultaneous financial interest in artificial intelligence.
“One of the Gates Foundations’ priorities in AI is to make sure these tools are used for the health problems that affect the poorest people in the world, including AIDS, TB, and malaria,” Gates wrote in a blog post entitled “The Age of AI has Begun.”
So what if ChatGPT — the online chatbot designed to replace human talkers — produces erroneous answers to questions. So what if ChatGPT is biased, or is used with alarming frequency to help high schoolers cheat, or could even one day steal away jobs from real-life humans. So what if ChatGPT pushes misinformation faster than Democrats pump out fake news.
Gates has investment monies to recoup — and then some.
“While I can only speculate why Gates and [Google CEO] Sundar [Pichai] didn’t sign the letter to pause advanced AI research, I think they didn’t because they’re signing the checks to expedite AI’s progress,” said one of the signers of the open letter to pause certain AI development, Kevin Baragona, in the Daily Mail.
Exactly.
Follow the money.
Gates already pushed Americans into taking shots that were largely untested, largely experimental in nature, all the while scolding the United States for failing to respond to the coronavirus in the same manner as communist China — all the while scoring big on the profit scale.
He’ll behave similarly with AI, risk to humanity, be danged.
After all, he’s 67 years old with a net worth of $118 billion, according to one set of March 10, 2023, figures. He doesn’t have much to lose if humanity suffers in any coming AI storm.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
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