As Stanford launched its brand new Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Bill Gates as the keynote speaker spoke at depth just as he has in the last few years about his hopes and fears for Artificial Intelligence (AI), reported The Vox.
As per the Stanford Daily, Gates said, “The world hasn’t had that many technologies that are both promising and dangerous the way AI is.”
He further added that so far it was good that the world had nuclear weapons and nuclear energy both.
This comparison with nuclear energy and nuclear weapons of of Artificial Intelligence which is usually utilised to show users ads, play games, write stories, and create photographs might seem high strung to some. However, many experts affirm that it’s warranted, the report said.
There is a considerable risk that researchers may create powerful AI systems which might have behavior that is unplanned and might have the risk of being deployed carelessly. As a result, experts might think this might drive our own species on the brink of extinction.
Regardless of these risks, scientists and researchers are eager to explore more of the AI system potential, with significant advancement in the last few months.
Besides its many risks, Gates also spoke at length on aspirations as well. He said that as far as AI is concerned on ways it has benefitted the society up until now, “I won’t say there are that many.”
However, he continued that he can see the potential, particularly in health care, education, and global poverty – areas which he has been keenly working in his life post-Microsoft, Vox reported.
The tech billionaire is of the belief that AI can be used to pinpoint promising drugs and advance the drug-development process, which could very well be prove to be transformational for global health.
Bill Gates went on to argue that Artificial Intelligence is already doing the same in those areas.
“If you give kids in some countries an antibiotic once a year that costs two cents called azithromycin, it saves a hundred thousand lives,” the Microsoft founder said.
Gates added, “I do not believe without machine learning techniques we [would have ever been] able to take the dimensionality of this problem to find the solution.”

Source: financialexpress.com