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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has said the call by tech leaders and experts to put brakes on AI will not address the issues that the world faces from AI advancements.

Gates said innovators should focus on tapping the technology to benefit the society rather than seeking to pause it.

Gates remarks come a week after 1,000 AI experts said in a letter that AI projects should be paused and the potential harm that the tech poses to society be looked into deeply.

Microsoft has backed the invention of OpenAI’s GPT-4, which seeks to replace the ChatGPT. GPT-4 has powerful capabilities such as holding human-like conversation, composing songs and summarising lengthy documents.

The experts, including Twitter owner Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, expressed misgivings about the pace of AI developments, saying the current series of innovations needs to be critically examined to determine their pros and cons.

“I don’t think asking one particular group to pause solves the challenges. Clearly there’s huge benefits to these things… what we need to do is identify the tricky areas.”

Writing in a blog recently, Gates lauded AI saying it is capable of having have an impact as immense as that of Internet and mobile phones, adding that the tech promises to positively transform all facets of life and can help in bridging the gap of inequalities especially in developing countries

Gates’ belief in AI is attested to by the multi-billion-dollar investments Microsoft has put into OpenAI.

While questioning the practicability of the calls to pause AI, saying that all countries are unlikely to heed the calls.

“I don’t really understand who they’re saying could stop, and would every country in the world agree to stop, and why to stop,” Gates said, noting that there are a lot of different opinions in this area.”