Scoop: "OG" Bill Gates returns to wage war on AI risks

Bill Gates is gearing up to 'dramatically expand' his AI safety push, and Axios has christened him the 'OG', which is the sort of compliment you pay a man when you can't quite say 'the last one who still answers his phone'. Sources say he is personally leaning on business leaders — a lovely euphemism for a billionaire ringing other billionaires until one of them agrees. He is also considering 'a major deployment of his resources', a phrase that in any other context precedes an invasion.

Before making the case for 'a more robust regulatory framework', Gates conferred extensively with leading AI executives, researchers and safety advocates, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Consulting the people you intend to regulate is the traditional method, naturally — the framework gets drafted in a room where the regulator is outnumbered twelve to one and the pastries are excellent. Amodei's pitch is that safety is a product feature rather than an afterthought, which makes him a natural co-author of the rules that will bind everyone who didn't get a seat at the table. One does wonder what a 'robust' framework looks like after it has been extensively conferred upon.

Congress remains thoroughly stuck on the matter, which is presumably why the drafting has been outsourced to a man with a foundation and a conscience. Gates spent years warning about pandemics before anyone fancied listening, and got roughly no thanks for it, so the odds of a second hearing are not generous. If 'personally leaning on business leaders' actually produces a robust framework, it will be the first recorded instance of the regulated writing themselves a curfew and then observing it. Do watch. Don't hold your breath.