Bill Gates says he’s bullish about the potential for artificial intelligence to transform education and learning — telling a crowd of business and education leaders this week that AI will eventually “be as good a tutor as any human ever could.”
Private-sector investments will play a key role, complementing the equity-focused philanthropy of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others, Gates said in an on-stage conversation at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego with Jessie Woolley-Wilson, CEO of Seattle-area education technology company DreamBox Learning.
However, he also cautioned education technology investors to be pragmatic, saying they should think of the field like the internet of 1999-2001, with far more financial failures than successes, at least in the short run.
His comments Tuesday in San Diego dovetail with his previous observation that recent advances in AI represent “the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface.”
AI as a means for equity: Woolley-Wilson started by asking Gates to reflect on his own educational experience, in which he was exposed to early computers at Lakeside School in Seattle. That led into the broader issue of ensuring that all kids can access a quality education regardless of financial resources.
Gates said he does believe that AI in education will eventually create new levels of equity. He cited, for example, the fact that most students can’t afford one-on-one private tutoring, leaving them without someone who can understand and adapt to their individual needs. Technology will ultimately fill that gap, he said.
He cited early AI tutoring efforts including Khan Academy’s Khanmigo, powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
In related news, DreamBox Learning released the results of a new study, conducted in partnership with the South Carolina Department of Education, showing the effectiveness of its DreamBox Math adaptive learning technology.
“I think at first, we’ll be most stunned by how it helps with reading, being a reading/research assistant, and giving you feedback on writing,” Gates said.
That last point is notable because giving quality feedback on writing has historically been tough for technology, he said, but that’s now changing with the advent of large language models and generative AI.
Paradoxically, he said, these emerging AI systems like ChatGPT aren’t yet as strong in math.
“Seeing the magic that the software can now perform, particularly for reading and writing, but within the next 18 months for math as well … I am really quite optimistic that the field of education will improve,” he said.
Long-term mindset required: At the same time, he cautioned education tech investors that “the number of dead ends is going to be super impressive,” a remark that drew laughter from the crowd.
Gates noted that many of the key advances right now are happening at the platform level, relying on the scale and computing power that come from investments by the likes of Google and the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership.
“There may be a few [startups or other new ventures] that completely surprise everybody, and rise to be the next Google or Microsoft based on their AI advances,” he said. “But I guarantee you, it won’t be more than two out of 1000. And it could be zero, honestly, in terms of the base technology.”
However, he was careful to clarify those comments: “I don’t want anybody to summarize, ‘Hey, he doesn’t believe in private-sector incentives for educational technology.’ Because in the end, that is the most important thing that will pull all this together into full solutions.”
