Bill Gates issues urgent AI warning and shares dangers humanity could face this year

Bill Gates has spoken out in warning about the future of artificial intelligence and why the 'real danger right now is not the AI's getting out of control'.

If you hadn't watched enough Black Mirror to worry about the future ahead and how such rapid advances in technology may ultimately end up being our downfall, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is here to clarify.

The businessman and philanthropist has been reassuring and warning about what he thinks the biggest genuine concerns are for humanity in the years ahead.

Whether it be three huge risks he think may define the 'artificial intelligence (AI) era' or now looking a bit nearer into the future and what the 'most dramatic' change we should expect to see within the next year is.

In an interview with CNN, after quickly noting 'we're not doing enough' to prevent the rising dangers associated with AI, Gates explained the biggest threat he sees to humanity within the next year is going to come in the form of an increase in 'cyber attacks'.

However, that's not to say he's blaming AI, oh no, quite the opposite in fact.

He explained: "The front that will probably see most dramatically in the next year is cyber attacks, because there there's a known business model, where you threaten to do something and ask someone to pay you for that or you create a disruption that changes something in the stock market or some betting thing that you do and do.

"And so the real danger right now is not the AI's getting out of control. We need to work on that. But that's years away in terms of the big impact that might have.

"It's really bad people using AI, particularly an AI where you can take out all the safeguards."

Bill Gates warned it's AI falling into the wrong hands who can overpower safety measures which we need to be careful of soon ( David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Essentially, despite safeguards being placed on AI in a bid to prevent anyone from using it to perform cyber attacks, or 'bioterrorism,' there are still currently ways for criminals to be able to 'take all those safeguards out'.

Gates resolved: "So when you have bad people, no safeguards, and the latest models, that's where over the next year, primarily in the cyber area, we are going to have a lot of negative surprises."

Indeed, it follows the Microsoft co-founder predicting on the era of AI as being 'one of the most turbulent times in human history' citing three different particular risks, one being - you guessed it - the technology getting into the wrong hands.

The first risk Gates flagged was the job losses AI is already - and will continue - causing.

Second, is the technology falling into criminal hands, being used for bad - such as cyberattacks, deepfakes, and fraud.

And last, but certainly not least, is the risk AI on children's development, stunting them socially, making them even more vulnerable to manipulation and online attacks, and limiting their cognitive and academic ability too.

Yup. Bleak.