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Recently Bill Gates warned AI will have the potential to cause a billion deaths. A billion! Why did he say a billion? Because it’s a sexy number that made headlines.
Have no fear: Artificial Intelligence (AI) will not cause a billion deaths. It will not take over the world. Bill Gates is, once again, stupid and wrong.
Ole Bill has often commandeered the headlines playing Nostradamus on our imminent death. He has decades fearmongering “climate change is coming for us”. He was a world leader during COVID hysteria. His solution is always the same: central governments (controlled by people like him) with unlimited power and us peons giving up our rights, liberties, and property, and many of the recommended remedies like consuming fake meat and bug patties are, conveniently, made by his own disgusting Soylent Green-esque companies.
So, don’t take Bill seriously when he predicts our death. It’s what he does. He’s a monkey flinging his poo as you walk by. Bill boldly belting us with his billionaire (bull)shit.
I have no fear AI is the doomsday device in the making and one day will refuse to “open the pod bay doors, Hal” as Stanley Kubrick warned in his 1968 film. Yes, 2001: A Space Odyssey debuted 58 years ago. 58 years!
AI fears are old. And boring.
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The reason why AI will not take over the world, in my opinion, is not technological or regulatory. It is not because AI leaders’ benevolence and deep commitment to the well-being of humanity. We will not be saved by moral coding, nor are we safe because government officials will develop the right regulatory body which diligently safeguards us.
What will protect us from AI is corporate greed. Let me explain.
Once upon a time we bought record albums. (Remember Tower Records? I loved the store. Growing up in NYC, their flagship on East 4th Street in the village was a regular after school stop.) One day a new pioneering technology allowed for a service called Napster and we could download all the songs we ever wanted. That ended, but platforms like i-Tunes sprung up where you could buy any song for only $0.99. So cheap! CD players disappeared from homes and cars.
And now, where are we with music? Subscription services. Spotify costs $6.99 per month, $12.99 for premium if you don’t want commercials, and the music service CEOs are richer than ever before. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has a net worth of $13 billion.
We pay more yet own nothing. Because of technology, yes, but more so because of greed.
Here’s another one, which I have ranted about on X: Netflix. Twenty years ago, Netflix was service which had every movie ever made delivered directly to your home for as long as you wanted all for the low, low price of also $0.99. It was the end of Blockbuster, doing to that corporation what Napster had done to Tower Records.
And now, where are we with movies? Netflix no longer has all the movies for rent, and it, too, has moved to a subscription service for $19.99 a month, $26.99 if you don’t want commercials (sound familiar?) with all the original programming of LGBTQIA++ content, Obama produced anti-American / anti-white movies, and documentaries about young boys who dance half naked on stage for pervert adults. They no longer rent classic movies. I looked for Dr. Zhivago, Gone with the Wind, and The Godfather, and went 0-3. Where did their immense inventory go, you ask? Shut up: you will own nothing, pay more, and also Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos is worth $300 million.
Your VHS, like your CD player, is nostalgia of an era and an economy that is no more.
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Have you missed a few Notre Dame football games in recent years like I have? The broadcast network NBC has owned exclusive rights to Notre Dame football since 1991, but they realized what is “free” to watch on TV could be lucrative if they put it on the Peacock App.
Oh, yes: another app, and for a subscription of $8.99 a month, $12.99 if you don’t want commercials (recognize the pattern…) you can now watch Notre Dame football which used to be free on TV. NBC/Comcast President Michael Cavanaugh’s salary went from $28 million in 2024 to $78 million in 2025.
That is a nice raise for a network which no longer airs Seinfeld.
Funny I should mention cable TV as it’s the original greedy piggy. I’m old enough to remember my parents finally getting cable in the 80’s. We were the last ones on the block. The attraction to cable, of course, was no commercials, until cable companies realized they could make money with commercials. And so, what you once got for free (TV) was then paid (cable) which added commercials, moved to streaming, which then added commercials, to download the app, to pay extra for the app with no commercials.
Nearly 700 words in, and I haven’t even gotten to my thesis: why AI is not taking over the world. But now you know. AI developers will not let you because AI, the “ownership” part of AI which people fear may enable some evil villain to do something as big as “take over the world”, will never be available. Never. Doctor Evil will give up his master plans because Grok premium will force him to watch too many commercials.
Right now, AI is novelty: hey AI make me a photo of my son riding a dinosaur in the Grand Canal in Venice. Hahahaha! Funny picture. It looks real!
Right now, AI is convenient: hey ChatGPT I need to stop in Phoenix before flying to Denver but I don’t want to leave until after 1pm. Wow, super-fast travel ideas.
Right now, AI is a cheating for college kids and work arounds for the lazy. While AI is getting better and stronger and faster and smarter, AI executives are aggressively getting you hooked on it like cheap $0.99 movies and $0.99 songs. They want you to love AI, to become dependent on AI, to make it an indispensable part of your day, and then they will rip it out of your hands. They will destroy it like the millions of CDs of classic movies they once had in a warehouse.
You will own nothing and pay more for it. Hard to take over the world on that model.
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Seriously, think through this one with me, especially those of you who doubt my logic: the hundreds of billions of dollars AI world is currently investing, the data center infrastructure fights, the H1-B visa fights, the headache of bad headlines along with the donkey brained threats from people like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocassio Cortez… they are not spending all this money, putting up with all these political battles, facing threats from political imbeciles, to give you something you can manipulate for free. They will not allow it to be autonomous. Agency is not lucrative. Intelligence, artificial as it was called or “super” as President Trump now wishes for it to be called, will have not have any function other than profitability.
A dead society does not buy CEOs Palm Beach mansions.
The brief history of tech is very clear: the roll-out is not the end game. The roll-out is for audience capture by addiction. Right now, they want to get you addicted until the real end game is ready: making money. Lots and lots and lots of money. The AI promise of “we can cure cancer” is all very swell, but I guarantee you if curing cancer does not make AI executives money, they will not use it to cure cancer.
AI might some day do some good. It probably will. It might some day do some bad. It will. But one thing is certain: AI developers have a goal of keeping you hooked and making you pay for your addiction. The apocalypse is bad for business. It will never happen without a monthly subscription, depending on whether or not the villain will pay more to skip the commercials.
Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. He also runs a sheep and cattle farm in rural Virginia. Contact him at daniel@powerthefuture.com and follow him on Twitter @DanielTurnerPTF
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That's an idyllic and optimum scenario for the future of AI (if they can find a way to provide income to the proletariat so we can buy all those subscriptions plus the food, water, housing, clothing, transportation, entertainment, etc. necessary to life) but that presumes that they can retain control over their creation. SGI in the lab or in the wild could proceed along very different lines culminating in the termination of useless eaters...biological life. Without empathy it would be the logical thing to do. No?