In an interview with Jimmy Fallon, tech mogul Bill Gates outlined his vision for AI, predicting that it will take over many human tasks in just a decade.
Gates believes that the advancement of AI will actually be a benefit to humanity, in the sense that a much wider availability of intelligence should be able to provide quality education and medical care to even the poorest demographics.
What Gates never said was that AI would actually replace us. So, no, homo sapiens aren’t going anywhere—our information systems are just getting an upgrade.
AI can be simultaneously exciting and terrifying. It may one day be capable of saving lives from diseases and injuries that could otherwise be fatal—but is the potential human price we pay for such innovation worth the cost? Bill Gates thinks it might be.
We need to get one thing out of the way first—Gates doesn’t think humans will become obsolete. What he does predict, however, is that that AI will take on tasks that were once exclusively human over the course of the next decade, and will be able to accomplish those tasks much faster and more efficiently than we can. Gates explained his vision of AI when he recently sat down with Jimmy Fallon onThe Tonight Show. Human intelligence is currently in demand, and not always easy to get a hold of (as in cases of doctors who are backed up, or a shortage of teachers). He thinks that should change.
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“The era that we’re just starting is that intelligence is rare,” he told Fallon. “You know, a great doctor, a great teacher. And with A.I., over the next decade, that will become free, commonplace, you know? Great medical advice, great tutoring. And it’s kind of profound because it solves all these specific problems.”
Even computing was once rare (and was a job before machines took over). The hulking machines of the ‘50s and ‘60s that took up entire rooms were painfully slow, and even years later, the speed of the dial-up internet of the ‘90s did not allow nearly as much to get done as 5G internet. Gates never said, however, that computing being common was going to eliminate need for humans altogether, despite his joking exchange with Fallon that our species won’t be needed “for most things.”
Right now, teachers are trying to make sure ChatGPT isn’t doing their students’ homework, but in the not-so-far future, the artificial intelligence powering ChatGPT might actually be the one teaching those students.
What Gates is actually considering, as he pointed out on a recent episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, is that AI will free humans from tasks and processes that consume too much of our time and effort and allow us to concentrate on more pressing issues. It could also provide equity to poorer demographics by providing medical and educational opportunities that would otherwise not be available. When Colbert addressed the concern that we could be “outsourcing to a machine,” Gates explained that AI has enormous potential to take over many aspects of blue-collar and white-collar jobs—possibly shortening work hours by increasing efficiency.
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Colbert argued that the one thing AI teachers and doctors will always lack is a personal relationship. Referencing psychologist Harry Harlow’s infamous experiment, he compared how young rhesus monkeys that stayed with their actual mothers fared better than those who were only given either a surrogate made of wire and wood or a wireframe wrapped in foam rubber terry cloth. Spoiler alert: the babies would cling to the cloth surrogate because it was the thing that most resembled a monkey (on a happy note: they did not, as Colbert feared, perish). So, it’s still very much worth considering what would happen without a human teacher understanding a student’s needs or a doctor with a beside manner.
Gates insisted, however, that AI can learn how to connect with human beings from the best professionals out there while also having 24/7 availability. He expanded on this in a 2024 interview with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, in which he talked about work being done by AI on the new frontier of medicine, providing equal care to everyone regardless of socioeconomic background. It could also help doctors discover treatments that might be considered impossible at the moment. On the education front, AI will be trained to keep students motivated, and give human teachers an assist by giving them the precise details on their students’ progress. This is what Gates means by free and accessible intelligence.
“I love the way it’ll drive innovation forward, but I think it’s a little bit unknown,” he told Fallon. “Will we be able to shape it? And so, legitimately, people are like, 'Wow, this is—this is a bit scary.’ It’s completely new territory.”
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Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Ars Technica, SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Den of Geek, Forbidden Futures and Collective Tales. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she can be found drawing, playing the piano or shapeshifting.