Bill Gates in his blog post calls Artificial Intelligence as one of the most revolutionary technologies in the last decade and says industries will reorient around it. This comes at a time when Microsoft and OpenAI known for ChatGPT have become the talk of the town.
Gates in his seven-page blog post highlighted the potential of AI to improve access to education, healthcare and also address climate change to bring more equity in the society. According to Gates, AI would change the way people work, travel, learn, teach, get healthcare and communicate with each other. Even industries in its entirety would reorient around it and businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they can use AI.
Healthcare sector
Talking about the impact on the health sector, Gates predicted that AI would help healthcare workers better use their time with technology taking over tasks like writing notes from doctor's visits and filing insurance claims.
He wrote, "The rise of AI will free people up to do things that software never will- teaching, caring for patients and supporting the elderly for example."
He also believed that AI could help scientists develop vaccines, replace jobs in task-oriented fields like sales and accounting and teach students math. He also felt that AI could go through a person's email inbox and schedule their meetings.
Education
In the education sector AI would help students personalize course content depending on their learning abilities and speed, he added.
Gates believes that with the computing power getting cheaper, GPT's ability to express ideas would soon make it feel like there is a white-collar worker constantly available to help with different tasks.
Risks of AI
Like everything else in Life even AI has its own risks. Gates while mentioning this highlighted that AI doesn't have enough context and could give a wrong answer to math problems. Through the added that these issues can be fixed in the upcoming years. Gates also added that it needs to be properly regulated and said, "We should try to balance fear about the downside of AI- which are understandable and valuable- with its ability to improve people's lives."
OpenAI
Praising OpenAI Gates said that he was impressed with the team's ability to train an AI to pass an Advanced Placement biology exam. He said he expected the team to take 2-3 years in order to achieve this task but it took them just a few months. He also mentioned that the company has set off a race among tech giants to release similar technologies like Google's Bard.
In September 2022, GPT scored 59 out of 60 and wrote outstanding answers to open-ended questions for the AP Bio test.
The 67-year old pioneer of personal computers said he is excited to see the impact AI will have on issues that his foundation works on and he expects the Gates Foundation to have more to say about AI in the upcoming months.
