the Microsoft The founder calls time on Amazon’s business as we know it—saying AI will make the e-commerce giant obsolete.
Billionaire philanthropist Gates added that the developer destined to win the artificial intelligence race is the one who can create a personal agent that can perform certain tasks to save users’ time.
“Whoever wins the personal agent, that’s the big thing, because you’re not going to a search site, you’re not going to a productivity site, you’re not going to Amazon again, ” he explained.
This is not the first time that Gates has expressed his hypothesis AI is used for personal agent duties.
In March, Gates thinks that services are like big language models rather be deployed as copilots to their human counterparts, or as he puts it: “like having a worker on you.”
Exactly what the personal agent will do remains unclear—though, speaking Monday during a Goldman Sachs and SV Angel activity in San FranciscoGates suggested AI copilots “read things you don’t have time to read” among other tasks.
The company that will release such a model remains to be seen, with Gates expecting the winner that would be a toss-up between an established Big Tech player or newcomers.
“I’ll be disappointed if Microsoft doesn’t get in there,” Gates said. “But I admire some startups, including Inflection.”
Gates refers to Inflection.AI—a company launched by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman—which aims to “create personal AIs for every person in the world.”
Microsoft is definitely supporting itself as the winner of the AI race, which is investing $13 billion in OpenAI and put it together newly launched Bing powered by ChatGPT services.
Likewise, Amazon doesn’t see itself out of the game, CEO Andy Jassy has said shareholders in a letter that the Technology is a “big deal” at the company.
Generative AI and the large-scale language models (LLMs) it powers are “core to positioning Amazon to innovate every part of our business for decades to come,” Jassy wrote in the letter.
Amazon did not immediately respond It’s fortune request for comment.
When will we get these ‘copilots’?
With companies racing to lead the AI pack it’s unclear when a winner will emerge—and who it will be.
So consumers may have to wait a while before using their quick sidekick, Gates said, adding that until organizations continue to embed existing AI technologies into their own products .
That’s before an additional delay may need to be included for regulation to be put in place, with technology leaders such as Tesla’s Elon Musk and Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak signed an open letter asked for a six-month ban on technology development until the guardrails are installed.
Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, also called for regulation—although he did not sign the open letter calling for a halt.
Gates similarly declined, saying the ban wouldn’t solve any of those challenges that humanity faces because a global approach cannot be achieved.
Although Gates often pointed out the dangers of AI if it is misused, he also emphasizes the positive consequences that technology can bring to humanity.
He reiterated such hopes this week, saying he hopes to see the technology deployed in development of drug development and development of the sector in generall—despite warnings from The World Health Organization that bias can be built into drug trials if the technology is not adequately monitored and evaluated.
The founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation added that LLMs who can produce compelling text affect white-collar workers, a theory supported by Goldman Sachs, which found 300 million jobs be lost or damaged by technology.
Meanwhile, blue-collar workers stand to be pushed away from robotics workers, Gates thinks, saying that humanoid robots in the future will be cheaper than their human counterparts.