During a press exchange, Donald Trump told a reporter that the co-founder of Microsoft had stopped making claims about the potential for widespread loss of life caused by autonomous tools. A journalist countered by noting that Bill Gates had in fact made these assertions as recently as the previous Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. In that appearance, Gates described the union of malicious actors and current artificial intelligence as a weapon of unprecedented power that could drive events causing 1 billion deaths.

Gates urged governments and political parties to establish mandatory safeguards and cooperate on regulation before the technology becomes more difficult to control. He framed the current trajectory as carrying significant risks, noting that AI could either be a "historic equalizer" or a major source of harm. These alarms follow similar concerns from former OpenAI and Anthropic employees who have accused the tech industry of gambling with human lives to accelerate development.