Bill Gates on AI and the rapidly evolving future of computing 

1:59 - unveiling of GPT-4.0 outside of OpenAI in August/September 2022 3:35 - Bill recounts a short history of AI 5:43 - Bill’s challenge for OpenAI to get his attention 9:05 - Bill proclaiming GPT-4.0 is a fundamental change despite its shortcomings 9:43 - GPT-4.0’s shortcomings 10:18 - shortcoming 1) sense of context 11:26 - shortcoming 2) math, its greatest weakness 13:20 - Bill’s belief that the shortcomings are not fundamental and will be fixed 14:23 - Kevin and Bill talk about examples where GPT-4.0 excels 18:28 - Bill’s musings on this generation of AI’s impact on society 23:43 - Kevin’s musings on the bar being lowered to communicate with computers 25:08 - Bill’s musings on writing computer programs with natural language 27:27 - AI and the Gates Foundation. AI’s impact on education and health 33:33 - how Xerox PARC influenced Microsoft in 1979 38:34 - moving AI compute from servers to self-contained devices 39:43 - one general AI model or multiple specialized AI models? 40:43 - scaling up the models to use all known corpuses and synthetic data 45:35 - what would a young Bill Gates work on in this day and age? 50:45 - how much does Bill Gates actually read?

THANK YOU. I’m 76 years old and have never considered myself ‘knowledgeable’ with or about technology. I do a lot of writing and still start my stories on paper and ink. One completed I then use Word etc to ‘refine and perfect’ what I wrote on paper. I know… very Old School’. That said, last summer when I heard about AI and it’s possible uses, “I was hooked”. Because of my quest for information, I happened across the interview. My very first time visiting Microsoft Corp. on line. Thank you you two for lighting the flames of learning with in me. I truly believe this will change the world in ways we presently can’t imagine. Thank you again.

Bill, it’s fun to see you get almost “giddy” over this topic. When I began with Microsoft in 1992, I was in the field trying to convince System/36 customers that one day they would want mice and color monitors for GUI PCs. Back then, OLE was magic and the dream of Clippy was almost science fiction. Except for a few practical visionaries like yourself, few could imagine the impact PCs would have across the planet. In that spirit, it’s great to see current Microsoft leaders ushering in yet another fundamentally transformative technology. Thanks for your past and continued contributions.

We're living revolutionary times!

Bill is right. This one is a massive shift. I can't believe how many people in tech continue to point out the shortcomings. The capabilities today are enough and this is only the beginning of real language I/O.

I’ve been using the new Bing chat for a couple of weeks and I want to give props to Microsoft. You’ve not only taken GPT4 (which is already amazing) and released it but you have majorly enhanced it.

I had my first computer when I was 13 years old. Broadband internet at 15. Smartphone at 21. Chatgpt at 33. A whole new generation of kids will grow up with all these advances starting from now. For me, all of the mentioned itens were always magic and object of appreciation and wonder. Also, I had to learn a whole set of habilities to work with them -and many more to work without the use of them. For the young people right now, this is all a thing of the past. Everything is truly changed. I feel like a person transitioning from an age without radio and electricity to an world of mass media and light bulbs. Only this time everything is happening massively faster.

when one talk about writing codes or AI programming then Bill Gates is the right person to talk to, to get better understanding on the subject. Kevin Scott is feeling the pressure even now when listening to Bill's suggestions. I think they want to impress Bill about their abilities of progressing AI. Now they have the the tree trunk of AI "Ready" and looking at ways to expand the AI branches, talking to Bill to get more info on it, is the best start. I am really really really impressed by Bill Gates knowledge even after leaving MS for so many years and not getting involved in technology stuffs, yet when asked about the future of things he can answer them so naturally - like he is born to know these stuffs.

When I look at the young Bill Gates and look at him now I get emotional. Time spares no one. It's a pity that Steve Jobs won't live to talk to Bill Gates about AI in 2023. Truly a legend.

Children are the future. Like Bill says the education system is lagging behind. Kids use ChatGPT to write essays and teachers use ChatGPT to mark them. What's the motivation for intelligent kids to stay on in education and learn skills which are now obsolete? Has any thought been given to WHAT children need to be learning right now? I guess we just need to teach our kids to aggressively exploit opportunities and take risks. If your kids are not of that mindset, but have innate gifts in analytical thinking, language , art, music, writing, communicating, they will be unemployed. They will not be able to follow in your footsteps when you die. Use of the word 'mindblowing' just shows that the people driving this have not thought it through.

Which paper are you talking about around 38:00, written by Charles? Can you please give full author name and the paper name?

I have been programming applications with LLM's using C#, etc. I honestly have to say OpenAI and the Microsoft Team have done extremely well in this endevour. The GPT large language models are extremely impressive.

Fascinating discussion, thank you! 🙏🏼

Really quite incredible how Bill Gates has managed to stay so relevant in all these major technological breakthroughs. Reading a lot is the lesson I took from all this.

I feel like bill is likely the Nicola Tesla or Benjamin Franklin of our generation and doesn’t get enough credit. He’s brilliant

Does anyone have a link to a copy of the printout he is referencing from PARC with Charles Simonyi?

As a huge fan of Bing Chat, I have to say, that I'm very, very concerned about your AI Safety Protocol. 1st, you rush out a Beta Test (which performed so poorly that it went mainstream), and then Microsoft fired the AI Safety team soon thereafter. It sets an unfortunate precedent on an otherwise historic moment.

Thanks Bill and Kevin…. This 87 year old techie started out inside a Univac II and I certainly am thrilled at the possibilities of this natural language breakthrough. It has been and continues to be a great ride…. JohnG

This was an excellent conversational interview. Well done!

Kevin - flawless interview. Great energy. Q. I want to "model" Bill's executive journey from early days to recently. As an observer-admirer since *Basic* days, I feel the need to complete the circle in my mind. Of course I'll look on my own, but thought I'd ask if you have one you would like to recommend.

In 1950, Seymour Cray began working in the computing field when he joined Engineering Research Associates (ERA) in Saint Paul, Minnesota. There, he helped to create the ERA 1103. ERA eventually became part of UNIVAC, and began to be phased out. I live in Eagle River, WI

Great to see Bill talking about cutting edge technology, where he himself plays a part. After all Bill is a geek, he obviously love too breathe these things.

Older subtractive methods of assessing achievement (finding out what someone doesn’t know from a tightly limited subsection of knowledge) needs to be replaced with a new system that captures what people have learned (an additive inventory of learning achievement from a much broader spectrum of knowledge).

I would have found it useful to hear both participants thoughts, and those in the comments, on reading to learn vs listening to podcasts and watching videos to learn at this point in time? Especially given the latter can be usefully done with the playback speed bumped up therefore allowing you to get through more content in less time. Similarly now with AI being what it is are you learning faster having a very targeted discussion and set of Q&A with it on the subject you want to learn.

I like how Bill simplifies and explains a lot of this, this is what he does best!

I like CTOs who have 3D printers and lab oscilloscopes in their background, instead of a Lambo or a Matisse.

Simply awesome discussion!

"It was really a powerful and motivating anecdote that you shared." I'm going to have to remember to use that one on my boss. She will love it.

Bring back 'Clippy the paperclip'. *This* time it will be great !

What an amazing person! Both are so smart and inspiring individuals!

It is a gift to watch the conversation between you two. I am deeply grateful :)

When Bill speaks on tech I want to listen.

9:09 this is a fundamental change 9:39 " ...it's a huge, huge advance." 21:28 next big change 33:34 Bill's expression

I really really love Bill for how sweet, intelligent and calm he is. And for his fascination towards tech and making this world a better place. Thank you for being alive and for all the projects you are moving!

Great interview. Thank you for posting it..

This was such an great and insightful episode! I learned so much from Bill and Kevin about AI and its impact on the world. Thank you for sharing this with us!

Reading 80 books a year is an amazing feat of achievement. I am lucky if I read my one book a month. Would have liked to increase that to two-books a month

Excellent talk Kevin and Bill. Seems like back to the 80s for the maestro.

Kevin’s conversation with Sam Altman is among my favorite podcasts of all time! this seems like a spiritual successor :)

Super high quality interview - Gates seems to be well informed. Thanks!

Wow. Just came for tidbits. Ended up watching and now rewatching the whole interview.

We are grateful to Bill for bringing Internet to homes with Windows in the early days. Of course I'm old enough to remember using DOS and coding in Basic.

I definitely appreciate this interview and Bill's insight on AI. I wish there was more mentions on the social and security impacts of the technology as those seem to be the hardest problems people at the bleeding edge self-admittedly know very little about (only trumped by how the darn thing actually works). I think the example of calculator's impact on education was a prescient one however like with many things AI, it's growth and impact and speed of deployment makes its advent uniquely different. It doesn't take incredible foresight to predict the opportunities for it to be misused or have its applications have wide-reaching unintended consequences. In very optimistic conversations like this, it's critical to always serve it with the largest amount of salt possible to keep the hard unsolved issues regarding social impact at the forefront.

Wow ! So great

Now tools like Wolfram addon with chatgpt wonder what is next on Bills list of things to tick off. Like the idea of tools add on for each profession to specialise the output to make chatgpt an auto tool to increase company output, thinking Naval archecture with all the fluid dynamic and hull designs testing.

Would someone provide a link to the famous piece of paper that Charles wrote about technological cycles at about the 38” mark?

Are Charles Simonyi's predictions available online anywhere?

We can use prompt crafting now to deal with some of the issues mentioned

Would it be possible to see that note from Charles Simonyi ? Is there a link that someone could share? It would be really appreciated.

Já estou aprendendo C#, Microsoft me aguarde 😉

Thank you so much for producing this amazing technology

Great discussion. One thing that caught my eye was your Prusa. What do you love to print?

Thank you for sharing this moment with Gates 🤝

I18n could be a huge step for the next iteration of NLP systems. when a kid is learning new skills but lacks the ability to express their discoveries in another language, or the same language, they can become frustrated and give up on learning. if there was some way to reword or translate output without changing context the child would gain confidence in sharing.

It’s at least an upgrade to an outdated search engine. It feels like we’ve been dyslexic in programming and now you get an answer much closer to what you are looking for and not having to sif through information overload

gpt has has revolutionized my life thanks to bill commercializing it, bill is fast becoming my new hero

Thank you for sharing this conversation, this was great. I think it's worth highlighting one of the first things Bill said, there will be a pivot from our current information representations schemes where a lot of work classifying and labeling information into ontological structures will be shifted into natural language. That's mind blowing, everyone who has used Bing, Bard, Chat-GPT and others have already seen this first hand. The second mind blowing aspect is the fact that so much information we model with natural language in information work and translate into computing domain is a core capability of these systems. So cool to hear from both of you whee you're at with respect to these innovations and uh... 80 books a year, tennis, pickle ball all while doing this thought leadership stuff is also quite mind blowing haha.

Kevin, I loved the authenticity of this conversation, you’re great. Thanks!

I wonder how generative AI can be used in healthcare instead of replacing doctors with automation if we use it to minimise the human error so that generative AI can build a deep real time knowledge representation and it can increase doctor's productivity and people from remote areas globally can access to better health care facilities with the help of generative AI and also the segment of generative AI and 3d printing seems to be fascinating it seems like AI printing itself❤❤

It's much easier to be relaxed about the impacts of AI when you're already incredibly rich and don't need to worry about it disrupting your career and family life.

Hi Bill - Given your aha moment with GPT-4, isn’t it time to prioritize AI Safety & Alignment Research within the Gates Foundation’s initiatives? As you’ve masterfully pointed out, the potential of AI to transform our world is immense. If we get it right, the upside for humanity is boundless. Unfortunately, the downside if we get it wrong is also boundless. In the coming years, with AI we may witness a modern-day Trinity Test, but with the probability of an existential disaster far surpassing that of the Manhattan Project. You have a history of successfully identifying and addressing the most consequential and neglected cause of our time. In my opinion, you did exactly that 20 years ago in global health, and your continued work there has been nothing short of inspiring.

Great seeing this.. I remember my shift from DOS to Windows and from WordStar to MS Word.. MS and Mr Gates have impacted our lives in India during the 90 s professionally and in personally too.. Today I look forward for the AI to metamorphosis our health care industry esp in countries like India..

Interesting interview, nice soul patch.

AGI is much closer than we thought.

Instead of expecting AI to give us the right answers, maybe we should be asking it to write code to come up with the right answer. It's easier to verify this way and easier to correct and improve. There's little use in an answer we don't understand where it came from anyway.

37:56 what paper or book from what Charles is he referencing? Wanna read it

Fantastic Interview!!

I really must say that I enjoyed this whole session! It's been real fun and seeing things from Bill's perspective.

Does anyone know what math people should brush up on that Bill alludes to at around 45:47

It's great that Bill Gates could now set aside his ego and appreciate what other companies have done thru out the tech journey along with his own contribution to all these development milestones. Always insightful and wise thoughts.

For gods sake can we get AI to fix autocorrect?? How are we still struggling with this?

He promised to talk about how AI is dealing with global warming. Did I miss that? That seems crucial AI engagment.

It is really nice this talk about things AI can help with as immature it is. I meet many high-school math students that are lost and neglected by the teachers. It would be very useful with a patient AI to help, but we do not have a detailed image yet of how to do this in general in the future. And visiting your doctor that has 10 minute to find out the next thing to do but no time to explain. Here is help needed.

Rumours are that next versions will include an extra level of self-observation and self-analysis, which will provide real-time feedback to the system itself about what and how it is doing while generating an answer. And it sounds very close to the definition of self-awareness.

43:44 "Can we use it for moral questions, which seems silly to even ask to me, but fine"

awesome stuff. Kevin, get a lint brush handy and run it over the shirt before these type of events (a tip that helped me)

He didn't lose his enthusiasm on new innovations even at this age....only such people can spread hope for this world

Reversible computing is the future.

Thank you for calling out AGI and it’s meaning

I would say it is an exponential advance in AI.

Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC) is an eight-bit encoding scheme that IBM developed to standardize how a computer's operating system and applications interpret characters, punctuation, and other symbols. EBCDIC is mainly used on IBM mainframe and midrange computer operating systems, but is also supported by some non-IBM, that is BING

Great interview!

In 40 prechecking post-checking, does that mean it will come with a conclusion of summing data?

Thank you. It really works

Bill is blown away

Enjoyed the conversation very much. now since we have figured out the technology the integration part is important. The possibilist are endless.

It is not a coincidence that Microsoft, of them all, is again at the forefront of the technology. Surpassing Google. It takes a lot of work.

❤❤❤love this conversation

Great Video!!

How does our brain process reasoning? I am thinking perhaps the way LLM works is actually very similar to the way our brain works.

Hotmail did revolutionize free email and history appreciates Microsoft for that as well.

the midst of deadlines urgencies. The capacity of the human mind in knowledge integration is truly phenomenal too.

what a great talk, well done guys.

Great question to Mr Gates at 19:15, how to see this AI moment in terms of epoch shifts and how we can evolve with it.

"6 months to 2 years" Right so 2 months then.

And not a single word about what social consequences these technologies will bring, leaving many without work. Progress is inevitable, but this issue was not even discussed. This speaks to their nature of morality.

one year ago Bill Gates has around 2-3 % share of Microsoft out of his 100% portfolio, this year he has more than 20% share of Microsoft out of his 100% portfolio. I think AI has great potential so he has increased his portfolio of Microsoft share. So learn from him, buy shares of Microsoft.

Maybe we can change the way we select things so we select based on advantages and not problems?

lewis carroll symbolic logic

Imitative intelligence is a far more accurate name for what we are seeing.