- Bill Gates says some of his tech predictions didn’t go how expected.
- Gates told the NYT that Silicon Valley’s swing toward the right was a “surprise” to him.
- He warns of AI misuse, emphasizing the need for defensive tech against cyber threats.
Bill Gates says he’s gotten a few things wrong during his decadeslong tech career.
The Microsoft founder spoke to The New York Times about how some of his predictions for the tech industry didn’t pan out the way he thought they would. Gates, who started the tech giant in 1975, has been around long enough to witness significant cultural shifts and innovations in Silicon Valley.
What he didn’t expect was its leaders leaning into the right wing.
“I always thought of Silicon Valley as being left of center,” Gates told NYT.
His peers, including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, have shown support for President Donald Trump — attending his inauguration and catching up at UFC events. Musk and Zuckerberg have both previously kept their political beliefs relatively private.
“The fact that now there is a significant right-of-center group is a surprise to me,” Gates added. Gates donated $50 million to a pro-Kamala Harris super PAC in 2024, the NYT previously reported.
The advent of social media also brought a twist in technology that Gates said he didn’t see coming. When platforms like Facebook and Twitter arrived on the scene, they brought about “ills that I have to say I did not predict.”
Gates said tech has been weaponized to sow political division and act against public interest. He told the NYT that he was “wrong” to think of “more information as always a good thing.”
“I didn’t predict that would happen,” Gates said.
Meta and X, formerly Twitter, are owned by Zuckerberg and Musk, respectively, and have both faced complaints about their approaches to content moderation. In January, Zuckerberg said Meta would adopt a “community notes” model similar to X instead of using third-party human fact-checkers.
While he had previously held more positive predictions for the present, Gates said he’s less optimistic about the future of tech. Looking to the future, Gates reiterated his apprehension about the evolution of artificial intelligence.
“Now we have to worry about bad people using AI,” he told the NYT.
Gates previously expressed his concerns about AI during an interview on the “On with Kara Swisher” podcast. He shared his uneasiness “that bad people with bad intent will use AIs for cybercrime, bioterrorism, nation-state wars.”
“In that case you think, OK, let’s make sure the good guys have an AI that can play defense against those things, and that makes you want to move ahead and not fall behind,” Gates said in the interview.
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