Bill Gates loves to talk. He loves to talk about nuclear energy. He loves to talk about climate change. Most of all, Bill loves to talk about Artificial Intelligence. When Bill Gates talks, I listen. I know many people like to criticize Bill but I’m not one of them. Bill Gates and Microsoft legitimately changed the world. Although I don’t criticize Bill, I am skeptical of some of what he says. Don’t be offended, Bill. I’m skeptical of most of the things people say. Think of me as a modern-day Doubting Thomas.
Bill made the news recently when he made the following comments about AI:
[Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates believes the future top company in artificial intelligence will likely have created a personal digital agent that can perform certain tasks for people.
The technology will be so profound, it could radically alter user behaviors. “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,” he said. This yet-AI assistant will be able to understand a person’s needs and habits and will help them “read the stuff you don’t have time to read,” according to Gates.
Gates said there is a 50-50 chance that this future AI winner will be either a startup or a tech giant. “I’d be disappointed if Microsoft didn’t come in there,” Gates said. “But I’m impressed with a couple of startups, including Inflection.AI,” he added.]
Is Bill correct? To a point, yes. Advances in AI will enable the creation of a personal agent. People will be able to use natural language to have their agent help them with scheduling, communications, and e-commerce, and it will work across all devices including cars.
Where I disagree with Bill is on who he believes will win the race to bring the personal agent to market. Instead of intimating that the creation of a personal agent will negatively impact Amazon, I believe Andy Jassy, the executive team from Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Amazon’s contingent of economists, would all say that Amazon should be favored to win the personal agent race. Why? Amazon has been pursuing a personal agent strategy since 2012. Amazon’s personal agent will be available by 2024.
I also disagree with Bill regarding what services a personal agent will provide. If the best an AI personal agent can do is schedule meetings and read emails, that’s not very impressive.
I believe for most people, an AI personal agent will be assigned much more important tasks such as personal financial planning, personal fitness training and nutrition, setting up and running a small business, tutoring and education, foreign language instruction, medical checkup appointment scheduling and maintaining a health regimen, performing research on a variety of topics, psychology and mental health, and so on.
Sounds like a job for Alexa.
