During a recent San Francisco technology conference that was jointly hosted by Goldman Sachs and SV Angel, Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, asserted that an AI-powered personal assistant that is yet to be invented might soon overtake mundane human tasks, such as internet searches, online shopping and even engagement with productivity tools.
Gates believes that these future assistants will be attuned to individual users’ needs in such a way that will render many of the current, common uses of the internet obsolete.
“Whoever wins the personal agent, that’s the big thing, because you will never go to a search site again, you will never go to a productivity site, you’ll never go to Amazon again,” Gates said, as reported by CNBC.
According to him, this assistant would facilitate the reading of important materials that a person may not have the time for. Gates highlighted the possibility of this AI assistant being developed by either a startup or a well-established tech giant, stating that the odds of either being successful were equally balanced at 50-50.
“I’d be disappointed if Microsoft didn’t come in there. But I’m impressed with a couple of startups, including Inflection,” he said.
As per CNBC, Gates believes that AI-driven humanoid robots will progressively become more cost-effective compared to human laborers in the foreseeable future, resulting in the displacement of blue-collar workers.
Gates says it will take a considerable time for the advanced future digital agent to become viable for widespread use. In the meantime, various companies are expected to embed generative AI technologies like OpenAI’s ChatGPT into their products. During the same discussion, Gates noted that AI would expedite breakthroughs and more sophisticated drug development in the health sector.
While the intricacies of the human brain remain elusive, he expressed confidence that humanity is closing in on the discovery of curative medicines for ailments such as Alzheimer’s disease, with potential human trials of these new drugs being a possibility in approximately 10 years.
Via Deseret