What you need to know
- While speaking to OpenAI's CEO, Bill Gates raised concerns about AI and the possibility of technology taking over his job.
- The Microsoft founder admitted that he was skeptical about AI and didn't expect it to advance rapidly or ChatGPT to be good.
- Gates also shared a unique point of view where the technology's capabilities are leveraged to lessen the burden at the workplace and potentially lead to a shorter work week.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates has openly championed advances in artificial intelligence and indicated that 2024 will be "the year of AI." Towards the end of last year, Gates penned a letter highlighting several ways the technology will shape the future as it becomes more widespread and more people adopt and integrate it into their workflows.
Interestingly, while speaking to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during an episode of his Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates podcast, the Microsoft founder expressed his concern over AI taking his job (via Firstpost).
Altman and Gates discussed multiple topics during the episode, from GPT-5, AGI superintelligence, and video capabilities coming to ChatGPT. Gates admitted that he was skeptical about AI and didn't expect it to advance rapidly. He further indicated that he didn't expect AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT to be as good as they are at performing complex tasks.
I was very skeptical. I didn't expect ChatGPT to get so good.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates has previously shared his intentions to leverage AI capabilities to improve living conditions and the health sector in low-income areas through the Gates Foundation and its partners.
A 3-day work week is possible with AI
Elsewhere, while making an appearance at Trevor Noah's What Now? podcast, Bill Gates talked about AI and its possibility of claiming jobs from professionals. Gates shared a unique point of view in which humans didn't have to work as hard as their jobs, with the possibility of showing up at the workplace for only three days.
He added that AI can be leveraged to make food and perform other daunting tasks, negating the need for people to work five days every week to make a living.
AI is rendering some professions obsolete
With generative AI becoming more widespread and organizations at the forefront of the adoption and integration of AI into their workflows, potential danger looms for some professions.
NVIDIA's CEO advised the next generation against considering coding as a career option. Jensen Huang indicated that AI is already a huge part of coding, and it won't be long before it takes over the profession entirely. The technology can already develop software in under 7 minutes. Instead, the CEO recommends biology, education, manufacturing, or farming as viable and future-proof career options.
AI has started rendering graphic designers and architects obsolete, as sophisticated tools like Image Creator from Designer (formerly Bing Image Creator), ChatGPT, Midjourney, and others are equally as good, if not better, at generating structural designs.
Per Microsoft's Work Trend Index report from last year, 49% of the survey participants were worried about losing their jobs to AI. However, 70% expressed readiness to adopt and incorporate the technology into their workflow.
