Bill Gates has publicly backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, defending his long-running warnings about AI risk and arguing that he is being attacked for speaking plainly about the technology’s downsides.
Gates said recent progress in AI has gone far beyond what he expected. After seriously studying Claude Code this year, he said even programming, the field he knows best, came as a shock.
"These AIs are now better than me in many areas," Gates said.
He said AI could spread across industries and cause large-scale unemployment. He also pointed to a more extreme danger: a small number of people using advanced AI to design new pathogens.
Amodei’s warnings have drawn political pressure
Amodei has long spoken publicly about AI risk. This year, he also entered a public clash with the Pentagon over keeping Claude from being used for mass domestic surveillance and for fully autonomous weapons that lack reliable safeguards.
Those warnings have also strained his ties with the White House and many people across the tech industry. Gates summed that up directly: "People are attacking the person most willing to talk openly about the negative risks."
Gates says commercial incentives are muting public discussion
Gates then widened his criticism to the broader AI sector. He said people who truly understand what AI can do are privately "very worried," yet many executives do not want to admit that in public because the industry is still trying to raise money for "the next trillion dollars."
In his view, massive commercial incentives are pushing the industry to play down the risks. He said companies can no longer be left to police themselves.
He calls for regulation, reviews and taxes
Gates said domestic and international AI regulatory systems should be built, with mandatory reviews for high-risk capabilities, including those that could be used to create new pathogens.
He also proposed classifying some roles as "Human Reserved" jobs that must be carried out by people. At the same time, he said AI tokens and robots should be taxed to slow the pace of machine replacement and use that revenue to support displaced workers.