- On the sidelines of an event Bill Gates again highlighted the benefits of AI in certain professions
- He notably underlined the interest of technology in education
- It evokes the project of the virtual tutor Khanmigo
If the AI is starting to give you anxiety attacks, you’re probably not at the end of your troubles. It is still easy to say to oneself that certain tasks or talents will remain the precariousness of humans. And yet, the progress is such that this assertion is probably erroneous.
The ChatGPT revolution is hitting skilled jobs first and foremost. And according to Bill Gates, whose company, Microsoft, has bet big on OpenAI, one of the next jobs completely transformed by AI will be that of teacher.
Make education more accessible
On the sidelines of an event called ASU+GSV, organized in San Diego by several universities, the co-founder of Microsoft indeed explained how AI could help people learn better, faster and above all at a lower cost – which would allow to expand access to education worldwide.
“Having access to a tutor is too expensive for most students – especially having that tutor adapt and remember everything you’ve done and look at all of your work”launches Bill Gates during his speech.
And to add that AI will soon be as good pedagogues as the best teachers. He thinks that one of the first significant revolutions will be around learning to read and write. Then the AIs will help students understand and fill in their gaps.
Even if there is reason to wonder what will be the very interest of a human teacher in the long term, the billionaire imagines AI “helping teachers” in developing their courses. He mentions in passing the Khanmigo project developed by the Khan Academy.
Khanmigo is a virtual teaching assistant – it runs on GPT4 and is described as “both as a virtual tutor for students and as a classroom assistant for teachers”.
Huge societal transformations are approaching
Of course, we are only at the beginning of societal transformations linked to AI. These should create phenomenal amounts of wealth while destroying many jobs (and also creating a few in the process). Goldman Sachs estimates, for example, that global GDP will soon be 7 points higher thanks to this technology.
Obviously, these major transformations risk totally changing the very way in which our societies are organized around work. Probably prompting us to already think about, among other major questions, how our societies could organize themselves differently in the near future.
A book to read on the subject is the work of respected futurist Ray Kurtzweil The Singularity Is Near (2005) which anticipates the exponential progress of AI and attempts to imagine what tomorrow’s society will look like.
