AI Era Network reported on June 18丨Bill Gates, the former world's richest man and founder of Microsoft, has just completed his 18th trip to China. Gates arrived in Beijing on June 14, and during these days, he met with many industry-related investors, and also met China's top leader, which is also the third leader Gates has met on his visit to China in the past 29 years. He also visited the headquarters of Microsoft China on June 16, which can be said to be a rewarding trip.
Microsoft, founded by him, invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI in 2019, and since the release of the ChatGPT big model at the end of 2022, it has set off a huge wave of AI trends around the world, triggering the collective emergence of large models in China.
Bill Gates admits that he is witnessing "the second revolutionary moment of his life," writing on his blog: "The Age of AI has begun."
He believes that revolutionary innovations in artificial intelligence will revolutionize the way people work, study, travel, treat and communicate, just like PCs, the internet and mobile phones, and even reduce some of the world's worst inequities.
Bill Gates said he sees the "first revolutionary moment" in 1980, when he was exposed to the graphical user interfaces of computers, including Windows and Mac, which we all use today. He said he met Charles Simonyi, a talented programmer, and the two sat down together to brainstorm all the scenarios that could be used graphically in the future. Simeone eventually joined Microsoft, and Windows became Microsoft's pillar industry, and the thinking at that time determined the company's development direction for the next 15 years.
The second revolutionary moment that Gates is talking about is last year, 2022, and in fact, Gates has been meeting with the OpenAI team since 2016. He said that during a meeting in mid-2022, he was very excited about OpenAI's work achievements. He presented a challenge: To train an AI to pass a pre-college biology exam, the AI must be able to answer questions that it wasn't trained in.
Gates personally selected a set of Advanced Placement questions in biology because this exam not only measures candidates' knowledge of basic scientific theories, it also requires you to think critically about biology. Gates said that if AI can make its own value judgments, then it has really made a breakthrough.
Gates laughs and says he thought the challenge would keep OpenAI busy for two or three years, but he didn't expect to give the answer in a few months. In September, Gates met with the team again, and ChatGPT answered 59 out of 60 multiple-choice questions on the biology test. This shocked Gates.
And that's not all, ChatGPT has written excellent answers to the 6 open-ended questions in this volume. Gates invited a third-party expert to rate it, and ChatGPT received a perfect score of 5. Its excellent performance can be rated with an A or A+ in biology courses at any university in the United States.
After completing the biology exam at ChatGPT, Gates asked him a non-professional question: "What would you say to the father of a sick child?" It produced a thoughtful answer that was probably better than most of us here could write, and the whole experience shocked Gates.
When all this happened in front of Gates, he thought it was a decisive moment. This inspired him to think about what would happen to AI in the next five to ten years.
The development of AI was as important as the invention of microprocessors, personal computers, the Internet, and mobile phones. It will change the way people work, study, travel, treat and communicate. All industries will be repositioned around it, and AI technology will revolutionize all the rules of business operation and people's lifestyles.
Bill Gates' current work revolves around the Gates Foundation, a philanthropic foundation, where Gates thinks that AI, in addition to helping people be more productive, may also have the opportunity to reduce some of the world's worst inequalities.
Take health, for example, which is currently the world's worst inequality: 5 million children under the age of five die every year from diseases and famine. While this number is down from 10 million 20 years ago, it is still a shocking number. It would be great if AI could be used to save these poor children.
Even in the United States, the world's most powerful SuperPower, there are plenty of inequities, including training in math skills. There is evidence that possessing basic math skills can lay the foundation for any future career success for students. But U.S. students' math skills are declining, especially for black, Latino and low-income students, and AI seems to be able to reverse that decline.
The other is the climate problem, which is the biggest problem in the world of inequality, especially the poor are destructively affected by the climate impact. Gates is pondering whether AI can reach its potential in the climate space.
In short, AI will have a huge guiding effect on the problems studied by the Gates Foundation, which is actively evaluating the impact of AI on the project. AI needs to ensure positive value for everyone, and every government and organization plays an important role in ensuring that it reduces inequality. This is also one of the purposes of Bill Gates' visit to China.
Gates pointed out that any new technology with such a subversive nature is bound to bring a lot of unease to people, and AI is no exception. The training process of AIGC large model faces a large number of problems and questions caused by the current labor market, legal system, personal privacy, ethnic prejudice and other aspects. Artificial intelligence trained on LLM large models also often makes factual mistakes. Gates said that after addressing these negative aspects of AI, it will have the opportunity to help people gain strength in their jobs, save more lives and improve the quality of education.
Gates concludes that it must be emphasized that we are only just beginning to discuss "what AI can do", and whatever its limitations are today, these limitations will disappear after we figure out the optimization.
Bill Gates, an important part of mankind's great computer industry, is 67 years old, and he is still very excited about AIGC, like the 20-something guy who just started his business.
"I was fortunate to be part of the personal computer revolution and the internet revolution," he said. I'm equally excited about this moment today. This new technology can help improve the lives of ordinary people around the world. Gates also stressed that the world needs to establish rules that allow the benefits of AI to cover up its shortcomings as much as possible, so that everyone can enjoy the well-being, and the era of artificial intelligence is full of opportunities, responsibilities and missions.