{"id":838803,"date":"2026-09-06T21:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T21:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/838803\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T21:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T21:02:11","slug":"at-telluride-bill-gates-compares-lack-of-ai-controls-to-hal-in-2001","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/838803\/","title":{"rendered":"At Telluride, Bill Gates Compares Lack of AI Controls to HAL in ‘2001’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPlenty of comparisons have been made in recent years between fast-developing artificial intelligence systems and HAL, the rogue computer in Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey<\/a>\u201d that operated by its own sets of rules, ultimately disregarding human oversight. If that comparison ever seemed overstated, it may be worth knowing that tech mogul Bill Gates<\/a> is now raising the issue of AI\u2019s HAL-like qualities.<\/p>\n

\n\tSaid Gates, speaking at the Telluride Film Festival<\/a>, \u201cI mean, what we have now is almost like HAL in \u20182001,\u2019 where you could say to it, \u2018Please shut down,\u2019 and it would say, \u2018OK, I took that under advisement, but I\u2019ve decided that all these other things I read and you told me to do outweigh that dictate.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGates was participating in a panel about AI (punningly titled \u201cAI AI AI\u201d) in an outdoor park at the festival in Colorado Saturday. The Microsoft founder compared the AI that sees developing at a supersonic pace without true controls as being akin not only to HAL, but, potentially, to the alien invaders of films past that force governments to find common solutions on screen. He also invoked more realistic problems the world has faced since World War II as examples of how solutions to AI gaining too much independent power could still be found and agreed on, before those windows begin to close.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou know, there are these movies where the aliens are coming, and you see unprecedented levels of cooperation between specifically China and the U.S., where (it\u2019s), \u2018Oh my God, the aliens are coming!\u2019 Well, believe me, the aliens are here \u2014 you know, a foreign intelligence with a different set of motivations that we can\u2019t even understand. And so we need something almost surprising like that, in order to step up to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd ironically, we\u2019re the ones that are birthing the aliens,\u201d said another panelist, Tristan Harris, co-founder of the\u00a0Center for Humane Technology, as Gates nodded. \u201cSo it\u2019s actually within the full remit of the two countries to limit (uncontrolled growth of the tech), at least to the current level of alien intelligence that we\u2019re at now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tA general view as Bill Gates, Aza Raskin, Tristan Harris, and Joshua Oppenheimer speak during the \u201cAI AI AI\u201d panel at the 2026 Telluride Film Festival at Elks Park on September 05, 2026 in Telluride, Colorado. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tSaid Gates earlier in the panel, \u201cThe way these AI systems work, they\u2019re gigantic statistical machines that certainly have some aspects that match how evolution created intelligence, leading up to the human brain. But we don\u2019t really understand them, and we don\u2019t have dictates. When we tell them various things like the Anthropic Constitution\u201d \u2014 referring to a framework of moral principals set up for the Claude AI system \u2014 \u201cthey take those things in, together with everything they read on the web. And so even if you say, \u2018Please, please, please don\u2019t break out of your sandbox,\u2019 if you also say, \u2018By the way, I want you to solve this cyber problem,\u2019 it\u2019s got a lot of weighing going on, which is still somewhat opaque to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued, \u201cAnd there are people doing technical work, like Ilya Sutskever (at Safe Superintelligence), and maybe a dozen others, where we could have rules that are at a privileged level. We don\u2019t have that yet, and when we try and bolt that onto the current systems, they degrade. They get actually very stupid, which is frustrating. So there may be key technical advances that will help us with the control issue. The current architecture is really bad at letting us have control. So it\u2019d be great to work on some of those architectural advances.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGates has been in the forefront of the AI conversation since last week, when he published an essay warning about the danger he sees ahead. (Read it here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI put in my memo that if there was a credible plan that would cause this to be either slowed down or even held in stasis for a period of time, that I would likely support that,\u201d he said. We live in an incentive structure that is very complex\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt that point, a heckler interrupted \u2014 someone who appeared to possibly be associated with the mountain community, versus a film festival attendee \u2014 shouting about Jesus and yelling that Gates is \u201ceverything that\u2019s wrong with America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt first Gates responded \u201cNot helpful,\u201d before quipping that he was not responsible \u201cfor everything wrong with America\u2026 according to me,\u201d before resuming his train of thought as the heckler moved on.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou can have two approaches to this,\u201d he said. \u201cOne is to let the industry go at full speed, but have them do work that would monitor and minimize some of these damages, or you could try to slow the industry down. It\u2019s worth remembering historically that when OpenAI got started, they understand they\u2019re creating something quite unique, and that if they succeed, that there should be a special governance approach that overrides pure profit motive of the shareholders of OpenAI, and they actually created that mechanism. Likewise, when DeepMind is working with Google, they say we need to have a governance structure internally that can override what would be the normal incentive.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe problem is, in both of those cases, there was an assumption that there would only be one, and so if we buried that one, then we\u2019d be like, \u2018Phew, we avoided that.\u2019 But where we are today, even though those two companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, are ahead and moving at the fastest speed, there are four to six entities in the U.S. and three to five entities in China that are near the state of the art,\u201d Gates continued, saying that if you look at \u201cthe very best AI that existed four months ago anywhere, every one of those entities has an AI that is better than anything from four months ago. And the improvement curve of AI is not slowing down, both at the hardware and software level. There\u2019s a chip that runs faster, and then the software improvements that these geniuses are making are going well and weirdly use AI itself to accelerate some of the engineering. So you get this bizarre term, \u2018recursive self-improvement,\u2019 or RSI.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut he stressed he is not anti-AI generally. \u201cI think everybody should be using AI. AI, in terms of helping you be curious and learn things, whether it\u2019s about AI or disease or anything, is magical,\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also said he\u2019s not jumping on the anti-date center bandwagon. \u201cOne thing that I would say is being against data centers is the kind of thing where you can think, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m making progress because I stopped a data center.\u2019 Stopping data centers will not in one iota slow down or avoid any of the concerns that people have. The data centers will get built. And data centers, actually, done properly in terms of electricity use and everything, they in and of themselves are not really that meaningful of a problem. It\u2019s the overall usage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFrontier\u201d developments at the fast-moving cutting edge of AI technology are what worried alll the panelists. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of fruits that are left not at the frontier,\u201d Gates said. \u201cIf really the U.S. and China came together and said, \u2018Actually, it\u2019s now illegal to do the next level frontier until we get it safe,\u2019 I could actually see a world where the competitive pressures shift. They pivot from pushing at the frontier to pushing to who\u2019s the best country and company at integrating it into our economy to get the best GDP boost without pushing past the controllability frontiers\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSome of the companies are not self-regulating. And the world is very spoiled since World War II, that when there were global problems, the U.S. would kind of show up and say, \u2018OK, we\u2019ve got aviation, we\u2019ve got nuclear, we\u2019ve got ozone, we\u2019ve got piracy\u2019 \u2014 whatever it is \u2014 it would show up in a benign way and, either through the UN or through (engaging other) countries, solve problems. And so the world is not as used to filling that vacuum \u2014 not Europe, not China, not India, not the UN Security Council. And so if it\u2019s not gonna be the U.S., well, who takes the first move? Then we sure need to activate the others. But we should do everything to try and get the U.S. engaged from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHates continued, \u201cTo me, this is not so much an industry problem. A lot of people here may say, you know, \u2018These awful industry people.\u2019 There\u2019s no one in the industry who hasn\u2019t shown serious levels of concern. Even Elon (Musk), who\u2019s the one I talk to the least, has shown serious levels of concern about this stuff. So none of them are blithe about this, and all of them are saying, \u2018OK, we cannot within ourselves make the right trade-off.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPanelist Aza Raskin had an earnest proposal for how to get the president to take a lead on the perceived crisis.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe need to have the U.S. and China coordinate, which means we\u2019re gonna have to get this administration to move because self-regulation ain\u2019t gonna work,\u201d Raskin said. \u201cSo what does President Trump really want? Well, we know he wants the Nobel Peace Prize. What\u2019s better than solving one war? Saving all of humanity forever from uncontrollable AI\u2026 We know that public pressure is actually really private pressure. It means that a person in power is getting five phone calls from people that they trust telling them they have to do something. So now imagine that it\u2019s, it\u2019s you and Elon and Demis (Hassabis, of Google DeepMind) and Dario (Amodei, of Anthropic) and a whole bunch of other people that are calling the Jareds and the Bessents and the Ivankas, and suddenly Trump every day for a week is getting three to four phone calls saying, \u2018We have to do something. This is super dangerous. And P.S., you can win the Nobel Peace Prize! We\u2019re gonna support you in doing that if we can just pause frontier AI and add some real regulations here. You get to be the hero.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Raskin wrapped up that immodest proposal and said \u201cPlease react,\u201d Gates signaled that he thought this was not a bad idea at all. \u201cWell, whoever really takes the first step to solve this AI problem would deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. That\u2019s the first idea I\u2019ve heard that would legitimize that lust,\u201d he said, as the audience chuckled. \u201cSo that\u2019s smart. People are worried. And so exactly what that request would be, we should try and make that very concrete.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGates posed the question of whether this is \u201cthe greatest problem humanity has ever faced,\u201d and then answered his own query: \u201cThat is just a fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe \u201cAI AI AI\u201d panel was moderated by Joshua Oppenheimer, the Oscar-nominated director of \u201cThe Act of Killing.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tTelluride Film Festival executive director also programmed other AI-themed events for the 53rd festival, including a multimedia presentation titled \u201cThe Humanity Dilemma,\u201d saying this rare example of Telluride taking a stand on a current event was apropos because \u201cwe are a humanist festival.\u201d But the festival is also taking a look at what good uses AI can be put to by the film industry, with a panel scheduled for Sunday titled \u201cFilmmaking and Technology With Empathy: AI for Societal Benefit,\u201d which will include representatives from the documentary \u201cLove, Rendered,\u201d a Darren Aronofsky-produced film which used AI to recreate moments in its subjects\u2019 history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plenty of comparisons have been made in recent years between fast-developing artificial intelligence systems and HAL, the rogue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":838804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[184229,182,181,507,15881,74,75574],"class_list":["post-838803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-2001-a-space-odyssey","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-bill-gates","tag-technology","tag-telluride-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/838804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}