Bill Gates, the investor and co-founder of Microsoft, said he believes artificial intelligence (AI) can make the world a “more equitable place” in his 2024 predictions blog post.
The billionaire entrepreneur said if smart investments are made now, AI can be used to lessen or even “eliminate” the time between new innovations reach the “rich world” and the “poor world.”
According to Gates, the main lesson to take away from AI use cases, particularly in the global health industries, is that the AI products must be more tailored to the people who will use them.
“If I had to make a prediction, in high-income countries like the United States, I would guess that we are 18–24 months away from significant levels of AI use by the general population.”
He said that in African countries, he anticipates seeing a “comparable level of use” in more or less three years. “That’s still a gap, but it’s much shorter than the lag times we’ve seen with other innovations.”
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Although still early, Gates said this year has given insight on what types of jobs AI can do alone and that it will serve as a “copilot.” He said there’s still a “long road ahead” with hurdles such as scaling projects without sacrificing quality and creating backend access with long-term functionality.
Earlier in the year, Gates stated that the “Age of AI” has begun and called the technology “as revolutionary as mobile phones and the Internet.”
Over the past year, the rapid emergence of generative AI has disrupted almost every major industry across the world. From India using AI for more predictive weather forecasting to the creation of entire AI-based newsrooms, even the Pope had something to say about the technology.
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