Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and billionaire philanthropist, believes that artificial intelligence (AI) will be as transformational as mobile phones, computers, and the Internet.
Gates stated in a lengthy opinion essay on his own blog, GatesNotes, that AI would transform the way people work, study, travel, seek health care, and connect with one another.
“Entire industries will re-orient around it. Businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it,” Gates said.
Gates believes that artificial intelligence will not only help people be more productive at work, but will also assist to decrease some of the world’s biggest injustices, notably in health, education, and climate change.
“For one thing, they’ll help healthcare workers make the most of their time by taking care of certain tasks for them — things like filing insurance claims, dealing with paperwork, and drafting notes from a doctor’s visit,” said Gates.
He claims that this will allow the restricted number of healthcare staff in impoverished nations to see more people.
AI-powered machines may potentially require less human interaction, allowing for speedier diagnosis.
During a demonstration by OpenAI, the firm behind the GPT language model, Gates claimed he became genuinely aware of AI’s potential.
During a meeting in 2022, he urged the OpenAI team to create an AI capable of passing an AP biology test.
He expected it would take them two or three years, but they finished in just a few months.
“When I met with them again, 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,” Gates said.
An independent expert also gave GPT’s responses to the exam’s six open-ended questions the maximum possible score.
Since then, OpenAI has released test results for GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in a variety of examinations and AP tests. They are depicted in the chart below.
Gates was also taken aback by GPT’s response to a non-scientific inquiry about what it would say to a parent with a sick child.
“It wrote a thoughtful answer that was probably better than most of us in the room would have given,” Gates said.
Gates claimed to have witnessed the most important technology advancement since the graphical user interface.
Yet, Gates cautioned that AI was merely scratching the surface of what it was capable of.
“Whatever limitations it has today will be gone before we know it,” Gates stated.
But, he stressed that laws must be developed to guarantee that the benefits of AI greatly outweighed the drawbacks, so that everyone may profit from it regardless of where they reside or how much money they had.
“Governments and philanthropy will need to play a major role in ensuring that it reduces inequity and doesn’t contribute to it. This is the priority for my own work related to AI.”
