{"id":675973,"date":"2026-09-06T22:52:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T22:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/675973\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T22:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T22:52:16","slug":"bill-gates-warns-of-ai-risks-at-telluride-film-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/675973\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates warns of AI risks at Telluride Film Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TELLURIDE, Colo.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0For four days every Labor Day weekend, the Telluride Film Festival <\/a>turns this tiny mountain town into something of a refuge from the outside world. Tucked into a box canyon and far from the usual machinery of Hollywood, moviegoers spend their days seeing films they may have known little about before arriving and talking about them almost nonstop.<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence, apparently, did not get the memo.<\/p>\n

This year, even Telluride\u2019s usually self-contained movie bubble couldn\u2019t keep out the existential anxieties surrounding AI. On Saturday, the festival devoted two events to the subject, beginning with \u201cThe Humanity Dilemma,\u201d an hourlong multimedia presentation mixing dire warnings with live music and imagery, and continuing with a panel bluntly titled \u201cAI AI AI,\u201d featuring Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.<\/p>\n

Introducing \u201cThe Humanity Dilemma\u201d at the nearly packed Sheridan Opera House, festival executive director Julie Huntsinger acknowledged that Telluride normally steers clear of taking political sides. \u201cWe just let the program speak for us,\u201d Huntsinger said.<\/p>\n

But on AI, she made an exception.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a very humanist festival \u2014 that\u2019s how we identify,\u201d Huntsinger said. \u201cAI is a threat.\u201d While acknowledging potentially beneficial applications, she urged the audience to become more engaged in the debate over its development.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all need to be very alert and vigilant and loving and kind and stop this s\u2014,\u201d she said, earning loud whoops of approval from some in the crowd.<\/p>\n

AI already occupies an uneasy place in Hollywood<\/a>, where filmmakers and studios are experimenting with the technology<\/a> even as actors<\/a>, writers<\/a> and other creative workers<\/a> fight to protect their jobs and likenesses from being exploited or replaced.<\/p>\n

For all of Huntsinger\u2019s warnings, Telluride is not treating AI as off-limits. Its program includes \u201cLove, Rendered,\u201d a short documentary directed by Liz Garbus and produced by Darren Aronofsky about an elderly couple confronting the husband\u2019s memory loss. Using AI along with family photographs and stories from loved ones, the filmmakers recreate the moment the couple first met and fell in love 70 years earlier. On Sunday, the film\u2019s creative team is scheduled to discuss the project at an event titled \u201cFilmmaking and Technology With Empathy: AI for Societal Benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Humanity Dilemma\u201d was presented by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, who appeared in the 2020 documentary \u201cThe Social Dilemma,\u201d<\/a> along with artist and researcher Joy Mauthe and violinist Andrei Matorin. Harris and Raskin also appear in this year\u2019s \u201cThe AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n

The presentation was designed to work on the emotions as well as the intellect. Original songs about humanity\u2019s relationship to AI ran through much of the hour, with Mauthe singing and playing guitar and Matorin on violin, as Harris and Raskin delivered warnings accompanied by images of environmental devastation, poverty and figures in the AI race including Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Larry Ellison. <\/p>\n

Their argument was stark: The race to build more powerful AI is moving far faster than governments or the public can keep up. Their deepest fear is that humans could eventually lose control of increasingly capable AI systems altogether.<\/p>\n

At the same time, they acknowledged the technology\u2019s potentially transformative benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is confusing because it represents both simultaneous utopia and dystopia,\u201d Raskin said. \u201cJust imagine having to reason about a nuke that could also solve cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the end, Harris was calling for a halt to the development of more powerful systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to pause frontier AI development and pivot and steer towards a pro-human future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The hour concluded with Mauthe leading the audience in a final refrain, singing that the future is \u201cstill in our hands.\u201d It was the kind of unabashedly earnest moment that could easily have tipped into awkwardness, but many in the room seemed to embrace it.<\/p>\n

A few hours later, Harris and Raskin returned for \u201cAI AI AI,\u201d held outdoors at the Abel Gance Open Air Cinema in Telluride\u2019s Elks Park, joined by Gates and filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, director of the Oscar-nominated documentaries \u201cThe Act of Killing\u201d and \u201cThe Look of Silence,\u201d who served as a moderator.<\/p>\n

\"Panelists <\/p>\n

From left, Bill Gates, Aza Raskin, Tristan Harris and filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer discuss the risks and potential benefits of artificial intelligence at the Telluride Film Festival on Saturday.<\/p>\n

(Vivien Killilea\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

For Gates, who has spent decades focusing much of his philanthropy and public advocacy on global health and poverty, the rise of AI has forced him to make room for a new priority. In an essay published last month<\/a>, he warned that the technology was improving faster than he anticipated and called for a new framework to manage its risks.<\/p>\n

At Telluride, Gates said he now feels compelled to devote some of the political influence he has long used to advocate for causes such as malnutrition, polio and malaria to raise alarms about AI as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this the greatest problem humanity has ever faced?\u201d Gates said. \u201cThat is just a fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates said his concerns have grown as AI systems have become more capable, particularly at writing computer code, something he has been obsessed with since he was 13.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe AIs are superhuman, i.e., better than I am at writing code,\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n

He laid out five broad areas of concern: jobs, biotechnology, cyberattacks, psychosocial harms and whether humans will be able to maintain control over the systems they are building.<\/p>\n

Oppenheimer said that after spending hours digging into AI risks ahead of the panel, he had come away \u201cabsolutely terrified.\u201d He read aloud an answer he had received after asking ChatGPT to estimate the risks if the race toward increasingly powerful AI continued with little regulation.<\/p>\n

The chatbot put the chance of \u201cpersistent dystopian outcomes for all humanity\u201d at 25% to 40%, a civilization-scale catastrophe at 5% to 15% and human extinction or permanent loss of human control at 5% to 10%.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what AI thinks,\u201d Oppenheimer said.<\/p>\n

Gates stressed AI\u2019s potential upside, citing advances in medicine, education and assistance to farmers in poor countries. But pressed on whether development should be slowed until safety measures catch up, he said he would be open to the idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there was a credible plan that would cause this to be either slowed down or, you know, even held in stasis for a period of time, I would likely support that,\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n

The difficulty, he said, is that multiple developers in both the U.S. and China are pushing closer to the technological frontier. Still, Gates rejected the argument that competition with China makes meaningful regulation impossible.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina does not want cyberattacks, bioattacks or loss of control,\u201d Gates said. <\/p>\n

The discussion was punctuated by a pair of outbursts from the audience. At one point, as Gates discussed the economic incentives driving AI development, a man shouted that they represented \u201ceverything that\u2019s wrong with America\u201d and invoked Jesus Christ. Gates paused before responding dryly: \u201cAnyway, not everything is wrong with America, according to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates argued that government and civil society need to move much more quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis five-year period, in my view, is a very critical period,\u201d he said, adding that responses that take five or six years to get underway could come too late.<\/p>\n

Despite the dire warnings, Harris pointed to signs that pressure for safeguards is growing, including calls from AI-industry employees to limit the development of more powerful systems. Just last month, Meta agreed to pay $17 billion<\/a> to settle claims by 29 states that Facebook and Instagram harmed young users while also agreeing to new child-safety measures on the platforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to leave you with not naive optimism, but momentum,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n

Near the end, Raskin suggested that President Trump\u2019s well-documented desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize might provide an incentive for him to pursue a U.S.-China pause on more powerful AI systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s better than solving one war?\u201d Raskin said. \u201cSaving all of humanity forever from uncontrollable AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates, with a wry smile, called the Nobel angle \u201csmart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhoever really takes the step to solve this AI problem would deserve the Nobel Prize,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Later that night, the festival would hold an outdoor screening of Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey,\u201d featuring HAL 9000, one of cinema\u2019s most famous rogue artificial intelligences.<\/p>\n

Gates framed the current stakes in similarly cinematic terms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are these movies where the aliens are coming, and you see unprecedented levels of cooperation between China and the U.S.,\u201d he said. \u201cWell, believe me, the aliens are here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TELLURIDE, Colo.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0For four days every Labor Day weekend, the Telluride Film Festival turns this tiny mountain town into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,285836,196146,289,290,285838,3189,381,24974,7266,285840,18,1796,285839,19,17,285841,82,26555,285837,3257],"class_list":["post-675973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-anxiety","tag-ai-risk","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-aza-raskin","tag-bill-gates","tag-china","tag-control","tag-development","tag-dire-warning","tag-eire","tag-hour","tag-humanity-dilemma","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-powerful-ai","tag-technology","tag-telluride","tag-tristan-harris","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117226553957961989","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}