Bill Gates Predicts 'Supercharged' AI Innovation on Climate, Healthcare Issues (gatesnotes.com) 41
"I'm optimistic about the world's climate progress," Bill Gates wrote this week — but he also explained why.
"In 2024 and beyond, I predict we will see lots of new innovations coming into the marketplace — even in very complicated areas like nuclear. The climate crisis can feel overwhelming, but I find it easier to stay optimistic when you focus on all the progress we're making. If the world continues to prioritize funding innovation, I'm hopeful we can make good progress on our climate goals."
And elsewhere Gates writes that "AI is about to supercharge the innovation pipeline." My work has always been rooted in a core idea: Innovation is the key to progress. It's why I started Microsoft, and it's why Melinda and I started the Gates Foundation more than two decades ago. Innovation is the reason our lives have improved so much over the last century. From electricity and cars to medicine and planes, innovation has made the world better. Today, we are far more productive because of the IT revolution. The most successful economies are driven by innovative industries that evolve to meet the needs of a changing world.
My favorite innovation story, though, starts with one of my favorite statistics: Since 2000, the world has cut in half the number of children who die before the age of five. How did we do it? One key reason was innovation. Scientists came up with new ways to make vaccines that were faster and cheaper but just as safe. They developed new delivery mechanisms that worked in the world's most remote places, which made it possible to reach more kids. And they created new vaccines that protect children from deadly diseases like rotavirus.
In a world with limited resources, you have to find ways to maximize impact. Innovation is the key to getting the most out of every dollar spent. And artificial intelligence is about to accelerate the rate of new discoveries at a pace we've never seen before.
One of the biggest impacts so far is on creating new medicines. Drug discovery requires combing through massive amounts of data, and AI tools can speed up that process significantly. Some companies are already working on cancer drugs developed this way. But a key priority of the Gates Foundation in AI is ensuring these tools also address health issues that disproportionately affect the world's poorest, like AIDS, TB, and malaria. We're taking a hard look at the wide array of AI innovation in the pipeline right now and working with our partners to use these technologies to improve lives in low- and middle-income countries...
I feel like a kid on Christmas morning when I think about how AI can be used to get game-changing technologies out to the people who need them faster than ever before. This is something I am going to spend a lot of time thinking about next year.
Gates notes that researchers are already exploring questions like "Can AI combat antibiotic resistance?"
"In 2024 and beyond, I predict we will see lots of new innovations coming into the marketplace — even in very complicated areas like nuclear. The climate crisis can feel overwhelming, but I find it easier to stay optimistic when you focus on all the progress we're making. If the world continues to prioritize funding innovation, I'm hopeful we can make good progress on our climate goals."
And elsewhere Gates writes that "AI is about to supercharge the innovation pipeline." My work has always been rooted in a core idea: Innovation is the key to progress. It's why I started Microsoft, and it's why Melinda and I started the Gates Foundation more than two decades ago. Innovation is the reason our lives have improved so much over the last century. From electricity and cars to medicine and planes, innovation has made the world better. Today, we are far more productive because of the IT revolution. The most successful economies are driven by innovative industries that evolve to meet the needs of a changing world.
My favorite innovation story, though, starts with one of my favorite statistics: Since 2000, the world has cut in half the number of children who die before the age of five. How did we do it? One key reason was innovation. Scientists came up with new ways to make vaccines that were faster and cheaper but just as safe. They developed new delivery mechanisms that worked in the world's most remote places, which made it possible to reach more kids. And they created new vaccines that protect children from deadly diseases like rotavirus.
In a world with limited resources, you have to find ways to maximize impact. Innovation is the key to getting the most out of every dollar spent. And artificial intelligence is about to accelerate the rate of new discoveries at a pace we've never seen before.
One of the biggest impacts so far is on creating new medicines. Drug discovery requires combing through massive amounts of data, and AI tools can speed up that process significantly. Some companies are already working on cancer drugs developed this way. But a key priority of the Gates Foundation in AI is ensuring these tools also address health issues that disproportionately affect the world's poorest, like AIDS, TB, and malaria. We're taking a hard look at the wide array of AI innovation in the pipeline right now and working with our partners to use these technologies to improve lives in low- and middle-income countries...
I feel like a kid on Christmas morning when I think about how AI can be used to get game-changing technologies out to the people who need them faster than ever before. This is something I am going to spend a lot of time thinking about next year.
Gates notes that researchers are already exploring questions like "Can AI combat antibiotic resistance?"
Signal to Noise Ratio (Score:4, Insightful)
In 2024 and beyond, I predict we will see lots of new innovations coming into the marketplace...
Sure. Just like every year before.
But will adding yet more innovations faster produce more value, or just more crap? And will we be able to distinguish the valuable ideas, or will they be lost in the flood of crap?
Re: Signal to Noise Ratio (Score:2)
Re: Signal to Noise Ratio (Score:3)
Didn't the statistic that "number of children dying before age 5" show an incredibly high value to the innovation that's been happening?
Re: Signal to Noise Ratio (Score:2)
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This time the innovation will have slightly-less rounded corners and will incorporate pastel shades.
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AI will undoubtedly greatly increase our understanding of climate warming. Unfortunately the people who understand it best are not the ones in a position to effect any of the changes we need to deal with it.
Re:the only claim (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure but we can say the same thing to just about any and all wealthy people who make such bold proclamations.
Everyone who has vast wealth believes (and mentally to some degree has to believe they earned it through their sheer will and pluckiness when in reality some amount of dumb luck and brutal underhandedness always played a part in getting them there.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't forget exploiting government, workers, and consumers... that's where the money comes from.
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Yeah that's implied by the fact of being a billionaire.
As cringe as it sounds the phrase "no ethical consumption under capitalism" does carry truth to it. Exploitation of the underclasses is not unique to capitalism but it is a large part of it.
Fortune favors the bold (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure but we can say the same thing to just about any and all wealthy people who make such bold proclamations.
Everyone who has vast wealth believes (and mentally to some degree has to believe they earned it through their sheer will and pluckiness when in reality some amount of dumb luck and brutal underhandedness always played a part in getting them there.
And we can put numbers to those as well.
Intelligence is responsible for about 40% of your success. Conscientiousness/hard work is another 30%.
That leaves about 30% of your chances of success are due to random chance: being in the right place at the right time.
Note that in his youth, Bill Gates made a lot of decisions that were, in a word, ballsy. Think back to when you were age 14-17 and consider whether you would have started a business, or would have taken a contract with a big corporation, or offered to trade [discoverd software ] bugs for computer time - to a company that banned you from the premises.
Bill Gates certainly had a run of luck, but he's also tremendously smart (check his biography), worked hard in his youth, and made some very bold decisions. Bold decisions have a tendency to be successful, since humans typically overestimate the negative consequences of our decisions. As someone once put it, "lucky people are the sort of people who give luck a chance to happen."
Would you have been that bold when you were young?
Would your life be more successful if you were?
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Sure, I certainly am not going to say Bill Gates doesn't deserve his success. He took chances, made smart decisions.
Something about the luck factor though is it permeates through all those decisions and really the biggest factor of luck is being in the position in the first place to be able to make those decisions.
Would I have made those bold decisions when I was young? Maybe if the circumstances were that I was born to a successful lawyer and a board director of Bank of America maybe I would have. Imposs
Re: (Score:2)
Well... to attribute 30% of chances to his intelligence/boldness (assuming thay those are considered within the "conscientiousness/hard work" cathegory), we should count all the similar people that did similar things and their results. Only ythen we cpuld calculate the success ratio and to give some credibility to your numbers.
You coul be correct, eventually, but I believe you are grossly overestimating the causality here. One data point doesn't count (it never does).
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Choice of words? (Score:2)
Wouldn't 'Foresees' be a better choice than 'Predicts'?
So Billy wants to be (Score:4, Insightful)
So Billy wants to be the next Nostradumbass. Nailed it! Christ, he couldn't even predict the importance of the Internet as it was obviously evolving right in front of his eyes.
Conflict of interest (Score:5, Insightful)
AI Lacks Intelligence - It's not the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
From Cory Doctorow:
"But with AIs’ tendency to “hallucinate” and confabulate, there’s an increasing recognition that these AI judgments require a “human in the loop” to carefully review their judgments.
In other words, an AI-supported radiologist should spend exactly the same amount of time considering your X-ray, and then see if the AI agrees with their judgment, and, if not, they should take a closer look. AI should make radiology more expensive, in order to make it more accurate."
Bill's just parroting the current bubble buzzwords.
Re: AI Lacks Intelligence - It's not the answer (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
TFA is about Bill Gates who has no AI credentials and is just jumping on the latest buzzword bubble.
Re: AI Lacks Intelligence - It's not the answer (Score:5, Interesting)
The ways in which AI even with it's flaws could be useful are different.
Do not replace the radiologist with AI, and you probably don't even need to augment the radiologist for their current workload. However, you have the ability to process more imagery, so you might start having more "just in case" scans with an AI check. Scans that might have otherwise been skipped for lack of radiologist to analyze them all. Any anomalies get flagged for radiologist review due earlier detection of asymptomatic problems.
For various innovation, AI techniques may allow more productive search of research material. Despite valuable and intense attention, you still end up never reading a lot of research that may be pertinent to your own work. Assuming the AI technique accurately preserves attribution, it could be used to direct what papers you read and make connections currently missed solely due to scientists not knowing they should read a particular paper.
Not to mention direct applicability for chewing on very noisy datasets with all sorts of statistical work so tedious that it is considered hopeless without AI to explore so many parameters and research practically has to pick and choose and skip data processing that's just too much to deal with.
AI may not be intelligent, but it does open up new tools for processing data and knowledge to extend the reach of various technical people.
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Indeed. The usual mosons hail this as the next big revolution, but that just demonstrates how little actual insight they have. well, maybe these morons can be replaced with "AI", but any job that requires a bit of insight or were significant damage can result from violating basic rules is not going to benefit from "AI" much.
If this was really the "revolution" claimed, the main problems would have been fixed by now. Instead, nothing like that happened. The only thing that amazes me is how the AI people have
What they've always done (Score:4, Informative)
Alternatives (Re:What they've always done) (Score:1, Troll)
Big pharma & fossil fuel companies will use all the AI advantages & opportunities they can to do what they always have done; maximise profits & market share at the expense of all else. Gates is misleading us, yet again.
Perhaps you've heard this joke before... Do you know what physicians call "alternative medicine" that works? They call it "medicine".
The "big pharma" companies were all the evil profit seekers until COVID-19 came to scare everyone, then all of the sudden everyone ran to them looking for medicine that works. Those that did the best in providing what works got the most profits, because we reward people that provide useful products and services with profits. Those that didn't provide useful products and ser
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Why Gates does what he does (Score:5, Insightful)
It's why I started Microsoft, and it's why Melinda and I started the Gates Foundation
Bullshit.
Gates started Microsoft to get rich, then he created the Gates Foundation to shield his wealth from the taxman [propublica.org].
I can't stand billionnaires posturing and running their mouth about philanthropic activities when the only thing they're really doing is evading taxes.
Don't be fooled: Bill Gates hasn't changed and hasn't become a nice man concerned with doing good around him. He does philanthropy for the same reason all the other disgusting billionnaire big tech bros do philanthropy: to avoid paying his fair share of taxes.
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Indeed.
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Whenever one talks about what is in the mind of anyone else, he (or she) is in reality exposing his (or her) proper personality. You donâ(TM)t know B Gates, nor his dreams, gusts, hiden parts⦠just projecting sort of ÂÂIf it was me.. which apparently you Âre not!
Re: (Score:2)
Genuinely good people aren't just good on the inside: they also behave well, for everybody to see.
People are judged by their actions for good reasons. Gates is not likely to be judged favorably, because he's never done anything to prove he's anything other than a typical ruthless tech bro sociopath.
Who own the technology? How much does it cost? (Score:2)
Irrelevant has-been pedicts bullshit (Score:2)
That would have been a better headline. Just predicting a mindless hype will "solve all problems: can apparently get you press exposure though if you have a lot of money and did a lot of damage to get it.
Doomsday Bunkers (Score:2)
Desperation... (Score:2)
Bill Gates ... (Score:1)
should burn in Hell.
aka AI provides new ways to push the Gates agenda (Score:2)
AI has shown itself to be very good at producing derivative results based on the training material but it's still GIGO. AI is not rational, it will tell you want to hear which makes it an excellent platform to push your own personal agenda.
I do not look forward to Gates announcing that AI has shown him the light and how the rest of the world must therefor follow.
Keep shorting Tesla stock, a-hole (Score:2)
I hope he loses another $1.5bil.