‘The Age of AI Has Begun’: Bill Gates Hails Technology As Revolutionary as Mobile Phones & Internet

Gates hails AI revolutionary tech since Graphical User Interface (GPU) in 1980s

New Delhi: Billionaire, Microsoft-founder, and Philanthropist Bill Gates is awestruck with the revolutionary potential of Aritificial Intelligence related applications including ChatGPT, Bing, more. In his Gates notes, he shared how much he is being attracted towards AI and Machine Learning and considered him one of the two demonstrations of technology that struck him as revolutionary in his lifetime, the other one is Graphical User Interface (GPU).

“The first time was in 1980, when I was introduced to a graphical user interface—the forerunner of every modern operating system, including Windows. I sat with the person who had shown me the demo, a brilliant programmer named Charles Simonyi, and we immediately started brainstorming about all the things we could do with such a user-friendly approach to computing. Charles eventually joined Microsoft, Windows became the backbone of Microsoft, and the thinking we did after that demo helped set the company’s agenda for the next 15 years,” Gates wrote in his notes.

Bill Gates reminisced his meeting with the team from OpenAI last year and was impressed by their work and steady progress. He had given them a challenge to train an artificial intelligence to pass an Advanced Placement biology exam.

Bill Gates wrote: I thought the challenge would keep them busy for two or three years. They finished it in just a few months. In September, 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. Then it wrote outstanding answers to six open-ended questions from the exam.

“I knew I had just seen the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface,” he added.

Bill Gates Thinks AI Can Help To Reduce World’s Inequities

Gates thought that “in addition to helping people be more productive – AI can reduce some of the world’s worst inequities”. He further said that 5 million children under the age of 5 die every year and nearly all of these children were born in poor countries and die of preventable causes like diarrhea or malaria. “ It’s hard to imagine a better use of AIs than saving the lives of children,” he added.

“Climate change is another issue where I’m convinced AI can make the world more equitable. The injustice of climate change is that the people who are suffering the most—the world’s poorest—are also the ones who did the least to contribute to the problem. I’m still thinking and learning about how AI can help, but later in this post I’ll suggest a few areas with a lot of potential,” he added.