AI likely to teach children to ‘read, write’ in next 18 months, suggests Bill Gates

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates recently stated that artificial intelligence (AI) may be able to even teach children how to 'read and write' in the coming 18 months. The prediction was made by Gates at a time when AI apps sparked a debate about whether the technology holds the capacity to outperform humans in different domains.

The debate has led to several tests which were conducted so that the performance of AI and humans can be compared. One such test was done on the revolutionary and famous chatbot ChatGPT, which has been developed by OpenAI, to assess its ability to crack the toughest competitive exams.

Questions have also been raised about how AI can help students enhance their learning skills. In the wake of these educational debates, Gates spoke positively about how AI can make a massive contribution to teaching children how to write and read.

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The philanthropist wrote on his website “Gates Notes” about a keynote talk which was held at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, United States. During the talk, Gates had predicted that AI will work as an aide to teachers in the next 18 months and will give feedback on writing.

“If you just took the next 18 months, the AIs will come in as a teacher’s aide and give feedback on writing. And then they will amp up what we’re able to do in math. Our bottleneck in math really is more of how we fit in the overall system and getting that teacher adoption," said Gates in the talk.

He had suggested that for such tutoring services, AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT Plus may charge, but Gates argued that they will still be more accessible and affordable compared to traditional human tutoring.

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"We have very good tools today, that if they were fully adopted, would actually make more progress in math scores than we’ve made in the last 20 years. So my optimism about Edtech in general is not just because of AI. It is a set of things, even before this latest advance, that I think we’re getting smarter about and getting out into the field,” Gates further stated.

In March, Gates had written a blog titled “The Age of AI has begun” in which he said that AI-driven software is very likely to revolutionise the way students are taught. He also appreciated ChatGPT, calling it a revolutionary technological demonstration which he found similar to the graphical user interface's introduction in the 1980s.

Gates was impressed by the GPT model when he first saw it and since then, he has been thinking about how AI's potential will grow in the next 10 years. He also said that the focus should remain on creating AI-driven tools which can be made available to disadvantaged populations and low-income countries.

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