Bill Gates has said that Artificial Intelligence will revolutionise our lives in much the same way that the internet and mobile phones has.
The co-founder of Microsoft said AI will reshape the way people work, learn, travel, get healthcare, and communicate.
According to The Times:
Writing on his blog, Gates described how he was stunned last year by the technology being created by OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT. He challenged the company to train an artificial intelligence to pass an advanced biology exam.
“I thought the challenge would keep them busy for two or three years. They finished it in just a few months,” Gates said. “I watched in awe as they asked GPT, their AI model, 60 multiple-choice questions from the AP Bio exam — and it got 59 of them right.
“Once it had aced the test, we asked it a non-scientific question: ‘What do you say to a father with a sick child?’ It wrote a thoughtful answer that was probably better than most of us in the room would have given. The whole experience was stunning.
“I knew I had just seen the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface [the early version of a computer operating system].”
Gates believes that the technology will be like having a white-collar worker to help with tasks. He thinks that companies will have AI in every meeting, which will be able to pipe up and give its insights and answer questions.
As a leading force for funding projects in the developed world through his Gates Foundation, he set out a vision where health and education were also revolutionised.
However, Gates cautioned that the fruits of AI would not be evenly distributed to the poorest and governments and philanthropy would have to correct this. “Market forces won’t naturally produce AI products and services that help the poorest,” he said. “The opposite is more likely.”
He said that in poor countries, where the vast majority of under-five deaths happen and many never see a doctor, AI will give people the ability to do basic triage.
Medical breakthroughs and drug development will dramatically accelerate, he added, because AI will be able to process the huge data in biology.
