Pausing AI won't 'solve challenges': Bill Gates

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said that calls to pause the development of artificial intelligence will not "solve the challenges" ahead during an interview with Reuters.

Gates made his first public comments since an open letter sparked a debate about the future of the technology.

The technologist-turned-philanthropist said it would be better to focus on how best to use the developments in AI, as it was hard to understand how a pause could work globally.

His interview with Reuters comes after an open letter, published last week and co-signed by Elon Musk and more than 1,000 AI experts, demanding an urgent pause in the development of systems "more powerful" than Microsoft-backed OpenAI's new GPT-4, which can hold human-like conversation, compose songs and summarise lengthy documents.

The experts, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, said in the letter the potential risks and benefits to society need to be assessed.

"I don't think asking one particular group to pause solves the challenges," Gates said recently.

"Clearly there's huge benefits to these things. What we need to do is identify the tricky areas."

While currently focused full-time on the philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates has been a bullish supporter of AI and described it as revolutionary as the Internet or mobile phones.

In a blog titled "The Age of AI has begun" which was published on March 21, a day before the open letter, Gates said he believes AI should be used to help reduce some of the world's worst inequities.