AI Fears Are Reshaping College Majors — and Paychecks — as Bill Gates Warns "We Are Losing Control"

AI Fears Are Reshaping College Majors — and Paychecks — as Bill Gates Warns "We Are Losing Control"

Students are abandoning tech-focused degrees and Bill Gates says he no longer sees innovation as purely positive, as concerns about artificial intelligence spread from campuses to boardrooms.

· 1 min read ·
AI

A growing number of college students say they are rethinking their academic focus because of artificial intelligence, and new findings offer hard data on what those decisions may cost them [251266]. At the same time, Bill Gates, who built his fortune on technology, now says he fears the risks of AI and that "we are losing control of the systems themselves" [250748].

The Microsoft founder, long a champion of technological progress, told DN's Martin Gelin that for the first time he does not see innovation as positive [250748]. His warning adds to a broader sense of unease that stretches from climate change to the Covid pandemic to artificial intelligence, where many people describe a terrifying feeling of exponential growth spinning out of control [249816].

Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton called this summer's AI-driven hacking attack on the company Hugging Face "a little Chernobyl" [248222]. Historian and AI critic Jill Lepore argues that without regulation of AI companies, the risks will keep growing [248222]. How close the world is to a real disaster can be debated, but the pressure on students and workers is already measurable [248222][251266].

Sources

AI doom? What Covid and climate change can teach us #249816AI's "Little Chernobyl"? Nobel winner warns of unregulated AI risks. #248222Bill Gates: "For the first time, I don't see innovation as positive" #250748AI fears are reshaping college majors — and paychecks #251266

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