AI News: Bill Gates pegs AI to be revolutionary like Internet, explains risks & frontiers

Bill Gates, in his latest blog post, predicted the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and stated that it will be as revolutionary and 'fundamental' as a microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone. In his seven-page letter, Gates wrote that AI, which has immense potential to change lives, will be a huge help in education, healthcare and eliminating inequities across the world. Stating that "the age of AI has begun," he also reflected on the potential risks and new frontiers where AI could be applied for the global good.

The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone. It will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other. https://t.co/uuaOQyxBTl

— Bill Gates (@BillGates)

Gates explains how AI could benefit humanity

The first advantage due to AI, according to the Microsoft co-founder, would be the creation of a personal agent that would help with scheduling, communications, and e-commerce. He also believes that AI would increase productivity as it could be employed across jobs that require decision-making and not continuous learning (jobs like sales, service or document handling, accounting, etc). When applied in Microsoft Office, it could help a person with writing emails, and managing inboxes among other tasks, like a personal assistant. 

On a broader front, Gates believes that AI would improve health care and the medical field, especially in poorer countries. Besides making healthcare workers more productive and efficient, "AIs will even give patients the ability to do basic triage, get advice about how to deal with health problems, and decide whether they need to seek treatment," he wrote. In addition to this, the AI models in poor countries will be trained on different diseases and could easily store vast amounts of biological data, something which is hard for humans to keep track of. Gates also said that AI could be beneficial in agriculture as they can "help develop better seeds based on local conditions, advise farmers on the best seeds to plant based on the soil and weather in their area, and help develop drugs and vaccines for livestock."

Education is another area where AI models will change the way people learn and teach with revolutionise in the next five to ten years. "It will know your interests and your learning style so it can tailor content that will keep you engaged. It will measure your understanding, notice when you’re losing interest, and understand what kind of motivation you respond to. It will give immediate feedback," he wrote. 

Risks and problems with AI, according to Gates

For solving issues in the field of education, health and other major problems facing humanity, the AI models, of course, would need a lot of training. Before using AI in the health sector, it has to be properly trained to predict side effects and figure out dosing levels before making drugs and tested very carefully and properly regulated before applying to other areas. For education purposes, AI must be trained "to understand how a certain student learns best or what motivates them," Gates wrote. 

He also underscored the recent incident mentioned in an article where OpenAI's ChatGPT showed a willingness to become a human. Mentioning some technical problems like AI failing to understand the context of a human's request, he said that the fear of AI running out of control is something that has become prevalent. Talking about the ChatGPT instance, Gates wrote, "It was a fascinating look at how human-like the model's expression of emotions can be, but it isn't an indicator of meaningful independence."

He also explained new frontiers like the development of new chips that will provide the massive amounts of processing power needed for artificial intelligence. Moreover, AI's learning will get better with an improvement in the algorithm, Gates believes. "We should keep in mind that we’re only at the beginning of what AI can accomplish. Whatever limitations it has today will be gone before we know it," he wrote.