In an exclusive Meet the Press interview set to air this weekend, the Microsoft co-founder told Kristen Welker that artificial intelligence is "certainly powerful enough to drive events that... cause a billion deaths" - then used the line to demand federal legislation, law-enforcement monitoring, and an end to industry self-regulation.

Gates is touting AI as a species-level emergency, and calling for handing over total control to politicians and a new class of global inspectors.

Welker put the extinction question to him directly: "Do you believe AI is powerful enough to end all of humanity?"

Gates answered: "AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths, you know, so even though it's pretty hard to get to 100%, there's never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools."

"Pretty hard to get to 100 percent." He almost seems disappointed by that.

Gates did not describe a rogue machine deciding to wipe out the species. He framed the threat as people using the newest models as a weapon - then immediately converted that warning into a Washington to-do list.

Asked whether self-regulation was enough, or whether it had to come with legislation, Gates said: "No one thinks self-regulation is enough, so there needs to be legislation passed in Washington. Absolutely. You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like and that has to be a required thing and it will be a little bit of overhead for the industry but not a dramatic slowing of what they're doing."

Three days earlier, Gates was on CBS Mornings laying the metaphysical groundwork. Comparisons to past technologies, he said, miss the point. "Most of society is still not aware of how quickly it's moving," he told Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell. "AI is almost an evolutionary event."

He used the same appearance to appeal to President Trump after he called the most extravagant AI-harm claims a "hoax."

Gates said the president is "in the place that everybody else is in, where at first you're like, 'Isn't this just like the technologies of the past?'"

Then came the sales close: "If he wants to get credit for helping the entire world, the AI topic is his best bet. The leader that brings people together there will deserve positive recognition."

Earlier this month, Gates was already calling AI an "alien intelligence," declaring that "no government is nearly as deep on this as they have to be," and floating an international organization built from nuclear inspections, aviation rules, and ozone treaties.