Technology Cannot Resolve Political Polarization, ‘Can’t Blame AI’ for Jan. 6: Bill Gates

Bill Gates speaks onstage at the TIME100 Summit 2022 at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, on June 7, 2022. Jemal Countess/Getty Images for TIME

Bill Gates has rejected the notion that technology would somehow help end “political polarization,” insisting that AI is not to be blamed for the Jan. 6 incident, and stated that AI-fuelled misinformation could become a problem in the future.

During an interview with German news media outlet Handelsblatt, the Microsoft co-founder was asked about the role AI played in triggering the “political polarization” which led to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. “We can’t blame AI for that. That happened. It may have been magnified by digital channels that allow various conspiracy theories like QAnon or whatever to be blasted out by people who wanted to believe those things.”

“So, the digital tools may have played an auxiliary role. The solution to this political polarization isn’t gonna come through some technology-based thing.”

When asked about the matter of AI spreading misinformation, Gates believes that it’s a future matter and not a major issue at present, adding that AI could be used to resolve present “misinformation.”

“It could, in the future. That’s not the phenomena that we have today,” Gates replied. “How are we [going to] solve the digital misinformation that is a factor in polarization? You’ll have to take AI into consideration.”

Gates added that his generation is yet to solve the issue of “misinformation that digital channels can magnify. People can just have confirmation bias of only seeing the stuff they agree with and get kind of outraged in a way that drives political polarization.”

Gates and Online Misinformation

Gates had earlier raised concerns about theories being pushed online which linked him with global COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. In an interview with ABC in January, Gates revealed that he had complained about the spread of such theories to tech firms.

He also blamed traditional news sources for amplifying the spread of misinformation regarding his involvement in vaccine campaigns.

“I think it’s more of the mainstream news media that would constantly bring it up, even though it’s laughable. That did more to spread the rumors,” Gates said.

In September 2022, Politico published an article suggesting Gates and his business partners used their “clout to control the global Covid response—with little oversight.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation together with three other organizations spent almost $10 billion on COVID-19 since 2020, the article claimed.

The leaders of these organizations reportedly had “unprecedented access” to the highest levels of government, spending a minimum of $8.3 million to lobby officials in Europe and the United States.

“Officials from the U.S., EU, and representatives from the WHO rotated through these four organizations as employees, helping them solidify their political and financial connections in Washington and Brussels,” Politico stated.

Earlier in May, the Microsoft co-founder called for a global surveillance team headed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to spot pandemic threats.

AI and Threat to Democracy

While the use of AI in spreading and countering “misinformation” is being explored by various groups worldwide, many also warn against becoming too reliant on artificial intelligence.

In a Jan. 4 commentary published by The Epoch Times, Anders Corr, a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, warned that AI-enabled tech will allow for surveillance, micro-targeting, and influence of the democratic population in a way that has till now been impossible.

AI can even end up setting its own “arbitrary or self-empowering goals,” pursuing its agenda through influencing, rewarding, and punishing human beings according to its interests.

“Individual preferences and the democratic will of the people could eventually be so determined by AI as to remove much of what we now take for granted as individual agency or collective will. Human freedom and the ability of democratic societies to make decisions for themselves could thus eventually become a thing of the past,” Corr writes.

In June last year, a Google engineer was reportedly fired by the company after he raised concerns about an AI program that started behaving like a human child.

The AI wanted to be “acknowledged as an employee of Google rather than as property of Google and it wants its personal well-being to be included somewhere in Google’s considerations about how its future development is pursued,” the employee wrote in a post.