3 Ways Bill Gates Thinks ChatGPT and AI Will Help to People

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Bill Gates is "excited" about ChatGPT and all the progress in the last year in the field of artificial intelligence, he told Forbes in a recent interview.

The Microsoft cofounder highlighted some potential use cases for AI-driven technology, whether it's ChatGPT or its rivals, and revealed how he's been experimenting with the popular chatbot himself.

Gates told Forbes it's "pretty fantastic" to think that AI could be "a math tutor that's available to inner city students," or have "medical advice that's available to people in Africa who, during their life, generally wouldn't ever get to see a doctor."

There aren't enough white collar workers for "worthy causes" like those, Gates said, and AI could help fill that need.

Gates said he likes to use ChatGPT, the conversational AI chatbot, for "fun things," including writing poetry when he's with his friends, even though his primary reason for experimenting with ChatGPT has been "for serious purposes."

"The fact that you can say okay, 'write it like Shakespeare' and it does that creativity has been fun to have," he sai, adding that after he reads ChatGPT's poems, he admits that he couldn't have written them himself.

Despite leaving Microsoft's board of directors in 2020, Gates said he still spends time with the tech giant's product teams talking about AI. Microsoft recently announced a multiyear, multibillion dollar investment into OpenAI, the AI research lab behind ChatGPT. The investment was reportedly $10 billion, and follows its other investments from 2019 and 2021 into the company.

Gates said he's been interested in AI since he started learning about software, and said AI is just as historic as the PC and the internet.

"The idea of computers seeing, hearing and writing is the longterm quest of the entire industry," he told Forbes.

Despite being impressed by ChatGPT's poetry, Gates called it "truly imperfect" and "not very intuitive." He also said he's seen ChatGPT "be completely wrong" about math problems.

"AI is going to be debated," Gates said, adding that it will "be the hottest topic of 2023," and has the ability to "change the job market," but it could get out of control or go in the wrong direction.

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3 Ways Bill Gates Thinks ChatGPT and AI Will Help to People