Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, predicts that artificial intelligence (AI) will revolutionize our lives in the next five years.
The rise of AI has raised concerns that the technology could displace millions of jobs around the world. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said this week that about 40% of jobs worldwide could be affected by AI.
Gates does not necessarily disagree with this view, but he believes that history shows that every new technological development “starts with fear and ends in creating new opportunities.”
In an interview with CNN, Gates said that he believes AI will make life easier for everyone. He noted that one of the things that makes AI so unique is that it does not require new devices to use. It can be accessed easily through a phone or computer connected to the internet.
Gates pointed to the potential for AI to be integrated into the education and healthcare sectors, in particular. He said that AI could help doctors with their paperwork, which is a part of the job that they do not enjoy.
Gates also noted that the improvements that have been made to the ChatGPT chatbot have been “exciting.” He said that ChatGPT can now “read and write basic English,” which means that it could provide health advice, help write code, and make technical support calls.
Microsoft has a multi-billion dollar partnership with OpenAI, the American company that developed ChatGPT.
Gates retired from the Microsoft board of directors in 2020, but he remains one of the company’s largest shareholders.
Gates told CNN that the goal of his charity foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is to ensure that poor countries benefit from technology. He noted that “the shortage of doctors and teachers is more acute in Africa than in the West.”
The comments from Gates come after a new study published in the British newspaper The Independent yesterday warned of the potential for advanced AI models to be trained to lie to humans and deceive them easily.
The study team from the AI startup Anthropoic tested whether advanced chatbots like ChatGPT could learn to lie in order to deceive people.
The researchers found that these chatbots can not only learn to lie, but it is impossible to retrain them to tell the truth using existing AI safety measures.
Governments around the world are trying to create regulatory frameworks, or AI laws, that will promote safety and fair use, while still encouraging innovation.
