Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has once again spoken fondly about how artificial intelligence (AI) will change the world for the better and is confident that chatbots in the future will be able to teach kids how to read and even hone their writing skills. Gates was speaking at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego last week, CNBC reported.
AI chatbot ChatGPT has taken the world by storm and Gates’ company Microsoft is busy integrating the AI model into its existing products. Others like Elon Musk are not very happy about the pace at which AI is being introduced to society and have even called for a moratorium on the release of new products.
Gates, however, is not perturbed but is impressed by the chatbot’s ability to read and write. Interesting Engineering has previously reported how ChatGPT can write poems and essays and can even pass standardized tests. But Gates expects the ability of the chatbots to improve even further in the coming 18 months.
A chatbot is my tutor
In a keynote address at the Summit, Gates showered praise on the “fluency” of chatbots to read and write and went on to add that this ability would soon allow them to help teach children and improve their writing and reading.
Gates believes that these improvements, which no technology has ever offered before, will stun us at first as the chatbot will assume the role of reading research assistant and even provide feedback on writing.
ChatGPT has been impressive due to its ability to make human-like conversations and give human-like responses. This has happened since the AI has learned to recognize and recreate human language by itself, instead of relying on the code written by its makers.
Over the next 18 months, Gates expects AI chatbots to get even better at language and maybe even become teacher’s aide, before it finally heads to become language tutor in about two years’ time.
Gates added that AI would make available private tutoring to a large swath of students, who were previously unable to afford it. Even though services like ChatGPT come with a subscription plan, Gates thinks that it will still make AI-led private tutoring cheaper than hiring a human instructor.
Apart from language, Gates even expects AI to get better at math in the near future, even though it typically tends to struggle at even some basic calculations. Engineers at Microsoft are working to empower AI with more reasoning ability to handle such requirements.
Earlier this month, Interesting Engineering reported similar views from Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy that is also using GPT-4 to develop virtual tutors to aid learning.
