Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, recently stated that OpenAI’s GPT is the most revolutionary development in technology since the graphical user interface (GUI) in the 1980s. Prior to GUI, people used computers through a command line, and Gates took this technology to develop the Windows operating system, which revolutionized the software industry.
Now, Gates sees similarities between GUIs and GPT models, which have the ability to write a text that resembles human output and generate usable code. Gates challenged the OpenAI team last year to develop an AI model that could pass an advanced biology test. The GPT-4 model, which was recently released, scored the maximum score on the test.
Gates stated in a blog post that the development of artificial intelligence is as essential as the creation of microprocessors, personal computers, the Internet, and mobile phones. He believes that it will change the way people work, learn, travel, access healthcare, and communicate with each other, and that entire industries will revolve around it.
He is not the only high-profile technologist to predict the transformative impact of artificial intelligence. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos have also made similar predictions. Gates and Microsoft have close ties with OpenAI, with the former investing about $10 billion in the startup, which sells some of its artificial intelligence software through Azure cloud services.
Gates believes that discussions about AI should balance concerns between biased, faulty, or unfriendly tools and their potential to improve lives. He also advocates for governments and charities to support AI tools to improve education and health in the developing world since companies may not choose to make such investments themselves. The current CEOs also see significant business opportunities in AI applications and tools. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang compared the industry’s current state to the “iPhone moment,” when new technology emerges and entrepreneurs see promising opportunities and new products.
