GoKawiil
Tech News
Microsoft's Windows XP went on sale at retailers 25 years ago today, backed by a $500 million marketing campaign. The launch event in New York featured Bill Gates and Mayor Rudy Giuliani, along with a free Sting concert in Bryant Park, though festivities were toned down following the September 11 attacks. The OS marked Microsoft's shift away from the MS-DOS-based Windows line toward the more stable Windows NT core for consumers.
In a Decoder interview, Bill Gates said humanity should brace for roughly 20 years of turbulent change as AI reshapes society, warning the period could divide people into those comfortable near the technological frontier and those who reject it. He reiterated comments from his recent essay and other interviews calling AI potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons, and said current government policy and industry coordination are inadequate to manage the risks.
A commentary piece recounts how Jeff Bezos, in his 1997 Amazon shareholder letter, pledged to prioritize long-term decisions over short-term Wall Street pressure. Despite Amazon's stock falling below $6 per share by late 2001 and media skepticism such as Barron's 1999 'Amazon.bomb' cover, Bezos continued investing in warehouses, software, and customer trust, re-attaching his original letter to every subsequent annual report.
Bill Gates told New York Times columnist Ezra Klein that automation replacing human workers should trigger the same FICA payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare. He proposed defining a unit of labor so that work performed by robots or AI would be taxed like human wages, funded by the savings companies gain from not employing people. This echoes an August essay in which Gates also called for taxing AI tokens and noted that robots, unlike human employees, can be written off as business expenses.
In an interview aired on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' Bill Gates said a kill switch for AI systems isn't sufficient on its own to address risks, and argued companies should instead track exactly how sophisticated AI models are being used. He said the more pressing danger is people using AI for cyberattacks or bioterrorism rather than AI systems acting autonomously, and called for legislation mandating safeguards since voluntary industry self-regulation isn't enough.
Bill Gates said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' that he believes he may be positioned to persuade President Trump to support AI regulation. He warned that without intervention, AI could 'drive events' leading to as many as a billion deaths, underscoring what he described as the stakes of leaving the technology unchecked.
Bill Gates told NBC News' Meet the Press that it is "completely irresponsible" for AI systems to lack safeguards and monitoring capabilities, and voiced support for legislative involvement in setting such requirements. He said he wouldn't oppose California Governor Gavin Newsom's proposed AI "kill switch," but argued the more urgent threat is people with malicious intent exploiting AI tools for things like bioterrorism or large-scale financial fraud.
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is starting a new academy aimed at training aspiring startup founders, backed by $42 million in funding. The program is positioned as an alternative to traditional college education for people who want to build tech companies.
At its Goalkeepers event in New York, the Gates Foundation announced a coalition of about 60 organizations—including Anthropic, Google and the OpenAI Foundation—aimed at making AI tools available in more underrepresented languages, targeting over 3 billion people over five years. Bill Gates called for wealthier nations to boost foreign aid and pair it with AI-driven innovation, while the event highlighted the U.N.'s warning that progress on sustainable development goals remains slow.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures has unveiled its sixth annual Fellows program, backing 21 early-stage companies working across agriculture, nuclear fusion, robotics and data center power efficiency. The lineup includes Borealis Fusion, which is developing fusion reactors fueled by proton-boron rather than conventional deuterium-tritium mixtures. Managing partner Eric Toone said the selections are made with an eye toward a looming tripling of global electricity demand as economies electrify, not just today's AI-driven power crunch.
Bill Gates told Reuters that no government has adequately studied or planned for the risks AI poses to jobs and society, comparing the technology's arrival to an alien invasion in movies where global powers unite to respond. He said he has discussed these concerns with leaders including Donald Trump and is seeking a meeting with Xi Jinping, and suggested some jobs should be designated 'Human Reserved.'
Bill Gates addressed the Telluride Film Festival this past weekend, following the release of a 6,000-word essay outlining concerns about artificial intelligence's potential dangers. The Microsoft co-founder used the appearance to reinforce his cautionary message about the technology's societal impact.