Bill Gates’s Blunt Warning on A. I. As A.

I. capabilities accelerate, the technologist is shocked by the “complete lack of engagement” with the question of how to manage its risks. Bill Gates is a fascinating person in the artificial intelligence debate right now. He is somebody with experience in several of the different perspectives that most people can only hold one of: He was a revolutionary technologist who built some of the foundations of the future that we’re now living in.

When he was chief executive of Microsoft, he was a corporate leader. He has felt the momentum of corporate competition — Microsoft, of course, is still in some of the race dynamics present in A. I.

And then, as chair of the Gates Foundation, he has been working with governments around the world on regulatory issues, poverty alleviation and equity for many years. Very few people combine technological experience, corporate experience and governmental experience in quite the way he does. So his recent essay on A.

I., in which he says that he is staking his reputation on trying to get people to see how bad what is coming might be and trying to get them to see that we are not ready for what is about to happen, was something. It was a real departure from what I’ve read from Gates previously. When I sat and talked to him, I was really struck by how emphatic he was — how afraid even he seemed to be of what we are building, and how so many of the people in positions of authority are denying what is about to happen.

It’s really quite a call to arms.