Warren Buffett compares AI to the atom bomb

While Silicon Valley was busy treating artificial intelligence like the ultimate money printer, two men who have seen nearly a century of human history offered a chilling reality check.

Speaking at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, 92-year-old Warren Buffett compared the rise of AI to the invention of the atomic bomb.

A lesson from Bill Gates

Buffett told the crowd that his buddy Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, personally gave him a crash course on ChatGPT.

The billionaire investor admitted he was deeply impressed by what the model could do, noting that it could pull up and analyze legal opinions dating back across history in mere seconds. But being impressed did not make him enthusiastic.

Buffett explained that whenever a technology comes along that can do just about everything, he gets worried. The core problem, he pointed out, is that humanity cannot un-invent things once they are unleashed.

He drew a direct line back to World War II, saying the atomic bomb was developed for very good reasons at the time, but questioned whether releasing that power into the wild has actually been good for the next two hundred years of civilization. In his view, AI will change everything in the world except the way human beings actually think and behave.

Munger chooses old-fashioned brains

Sitting next to him, 99-year-old Charlie Munger was even less impressed by the Silicon Valley chorus.

The Berkshire vice chairman threw cold water on the current frenzy, telling shareholders that he remains skeptical of the hype surrounding artificial intelligence. Munger quipped that he still believes old-fashioned human intelligence works pretty well.

Their warnings hit the wires just weeks after more than 1,600 tech experts and researchers, including Elon Musk, signed an open letter in late March demanding a six-month pause on advanced AI training. That letter argued powerful systems should only be built once society is confident their risks can be safely managed.

Why it matters

Buffett and Munger are not tech luddites; they are masters of risk management who care far more about downside survival than upside hype. For founders and investors rushing to slap AI into every pitch deck, their caution highlights the massive regulatory and legal storm gathering on the horizon. If mainstream capital heavyweights view the tech through the lens of weapons of mass destruction, aggressive government oversight will arrive much faster than Silicon Valley expects.

We think Buffett's critique cuts right to the heart of the safety debate in a way most technical roadmaps ignore. Tech leaders love to promise that AI will cure diseases and fix economies, but Buffett points out the unchanged constant: human nature. Giving superhuman leverage to species-level flaws is a recipe for unpredictable danger, and treating runaway software like an irreversible nuclear test might be the most sober take anyone has offered all year.