Bill Gates stopped by Reddit for one of its famed “ask me anything” sessions, and the Microsoft founder-turned-philanthropist shared his thoughts on a diverse range of topics. While the full AMA is worth a read, here are three of our favorite moments:
On the technology he’s most looking forward to in the next 10 years and what impact it could have:
The most amazing thing will be when computers can read and understand the text like humans do. Today computers can do simple things like search for specific words but concepts like vacation or career or family are not “understood”. Microsoft and others are working on this to create a helpful assistant. It has always been kind of a holy grail of software particularly now that vision and speech are largely solved. Another frontier is robotics where the human ability to move and manipulate is amazing and experts disagree on whether it will take just a decade or a lot longer (Brooks) to achieve the equivalent. [permalink]
On a “very solvable” problem that society (or the government) is ignoring:
I think that health care costs, education and poverty/mobility deserve a lot more thinking and innovation than they get today. The benefit of getting these things right would be amazing. With all the talk about inequity it is interesting that we still work on vertical areas like health, education, housing, food, etc.. as separate things rather than having a full view of the challenges someone faces. [permalink]
On whether or not he randomly makes himself a PB&J sandwich when he’s home, or whether he has people do that for him:
I do make myself tomato soup sometimes. It is kind of a comforting food and reminds me of doing the same when I was growing up. I don’t make sandwiches much. [permalink]