Where is AI headed, and how quickly will it get there?
Should we be early adopters or keep our distance? Will it make our lives better or put us out of work?
We can’t think of a better person to answer these questions than Bill Gates. He’s played a leading role in every significant tech development over the last half-century and has a pretty good track record for forecasting the future. Back in 1980, he predicted that one day there’d be a computer on every desk; today, on the show, he says there will soon be an AI agent in every ear.
Rufus and Bill are joined by Andy Sack and Adam Brotman, co-authors of an exciting new book, AI First. They consider AI’s impact on healthcare, education, productivity, and business. They dig into the technology’s risks. And they explore its potential to cure diseases, enhance creativity, and usher in a world of abundance.
Rufus Griscom: I’m Rufus Griscom, and this is the Next Big Idea. Today, Bill Gates is on AI, the path to superintelligence, and what it means for all of us.
I suspect that every moment in human history has felt pivotal and precarious as if anything could happen. But it also must be true that some moments are more pivotal than others. This is one of those moments. We’ve seen the impact of transformative technological change. The internet has sped the world up, and social media, now on almost every phone, on most every hand, has polarized our communities, hyperbolized our politics, and now we are in the early moments of the AI revolution. What will the next decade bring? There are few people I would ask this question besides Microsoft co-founder and global philanthropist Bill Gates. Bill’s been at the forefront of the race to build machines that can empower humans for 50 years, ever since he declared his mission to put a computer on…