Bill Gates told CBS Mornings that President Trump’s view that the risks posed by AI are overblown reflects a societal blind spot, with many people unaware of how quickly large language models could transform the world. 

Mr. Trump is “in the place that everybody else is in, where at first you’re like, ‘Isn’t this just like the technologies of the past?'” Gates told CBS Mornings co-hosts Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell on Monday in response to Mr. Trump’s recent contention that claims that AI could inflict serious harm on people are a “hoax.”

Gates added, “If he wants to get credit for helping the entire world, the AI topic is his best bet. The leader that brings people together there will deserve positive recognition.”

Gates stressed that AI has the potential to improve lives, but it also could be misused to engage in bioterrorism, financial hacks and other destructive acts. 

In recent weeks, a debate over AI’s potential harms has consumed the technology industry, prompting AI leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to propose slowing its development. 

“Evolutionary event”

“Most of society is still not aware of how quickly it’s moving,” Gates said, adding that comparisons to prior technological leaps are unhelpful given AI’s potential for surpassing human intelligence. “AI is almost an evolutionary event.”

Gates’ comments come after the Microsoft co-founder published an essay last month warning that AI is transforming the global economy much faster than previous tech revolutions, shortening the time frame to prepare for employment disruptions. 

“AI will take on work in law, customer service, medicine, software and manufacturing. It will hit these industries rapidly, over the course of a decade rather than a few generations,” Gates wrote in the article posted on his personal website. “There will be some new jobs, but without the right policies, there will be far fewer than exist today.”

On Monday, Gates stressed that AI has enormous potential to help people around the world. To that end, Gates said his Gates Foundation is spending $1 billion to advance large language models in languages beyond English. 

“We want in places like Africa, where there are so few doctors, where a patient could speak in their native language and describe their symptoms” to an AI app, he told CBS Mornings. “The quality of support for most of the world’s languages is very, very poor.”