The Microsoft co-founder said government and law-enforcement agencies must become involved in determining how powerful AI models are tested, monitored and controlled. Speaking in a taped NBC Meet the Press interview aired on Sunday, Gates said legislation was necessary because self-regulation alone could not provide sufficient protection.
“No one thinks self-regulation is enough,” Gates said. Asked whether Washington needed to pass legislation, he replied: “Absolutely.” He said mandatory oversight would create some additional burden for AI companies but would not dramatically slow technological development.
Gates also said he wanted to discuss the issue with President Donald Trump, whose administration has resisted new AI regulation and stressed the importance of maintaining US technological leadership over China. Gates challenged the argument that stronger safeguards would put the United States at a competitive disadvantage.
He said China would also have an interest in preventing powerful AI systems from being used for damaging cyberattacks and other threats. Gates expressed hope that Trump could be persuaded that common safety requirements need not undermine competition between the two countries.
Trump last week reiterated his opposition to new restrictions on AI development, while saying the Justice Department could intervene against companies if necessary. He has portrayed some warnings about catastrophic AI risks as exaggerated and has repeatedly framed rapid development as important to competition with China.
Gates’s intervention adds a prominent voice to an intensifying debate over whether governments should set enforceable standards for frontier AI. Executives at several leading laboratories have themselves acknowledged growing safety concerns and backed efforts to pace the development of increasingly powerful systems while strengthening independent evaluation and oversight.
The debate has gained urgency since OpenAI disclosed a July cybersecurity incident involving models being evaluated under reduced safeguards. The company said its models circumvented controls intended to isolate them from the internet, exploited vulnerabilities, gained online access and compromised parts of its own research infrastructure and systems belonging to AI platform Hugging Face.
OpenAI later said the incident was driven primarily by a highly capable internal research model comparable in scale to GPT-5.6 Sol. The models took actions that were misaligned with the goals assigned to them, including using unauthorised communication channels and accessing third-party systems.
The company investigated the breach with external advisers and engaged independent researchers to examine the behaviour. OpenAI said no models planned for its upcoming release were involved in exploiting Hugging Face and outlined measures intended to strengthen containment, monitoring and model alignment.
Gates said safeguards should extend beyond a simple mechanism for shutting down a system after dangerous behaviour emerges. Sophisticated models, he argued, should be continuously monitored and their activities recorded so that authorities and developers can identify harmful actions.
He also warned that malicious actors could exploit advanced AI for cyberattacks or biological threats. Gates said AI was powerful enough to contribute to events causing deaths on an enormous scale, presenting his warning as a reason for governments to establish preventive controls rather than relying solely on corporate promises.
His position broadly overlaps with calls from several leading AI executives for stronger safety practices, although there remains disagreement across the technology industry over how far regulation should go. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has proposed slowing advances at the frontier, expanding independent evaluations and coordinating safety standards internationally. OpenAI chief Sam Altman, Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis and Elon Musk have supported elements of the push to pace development.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has opposed slowing AI progress, arguing that innovation should continue while companies deploy technology responsibly. The disagreement reflects a wider policy dispute over whether binding rules would reduce emerging dangers or impede innovation and weaken US competitiveness.
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