AI is about to completely change how we use computers

AI is about to completely change how we use computers

By Bill Gates | November 9, 2023

Five years from now, you won’t have to use different apps for different tasks. You’ll simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do—whether it’s drafting a document, making a spreadsheet, scheduling a meeting, analyzing data, sending an email, or even buying movie tickets. Depending on how much information you choose to share with it, the software will be able to respond personally because it will have a rich understanding of your life. In the near future, anyone who’s online will be able to have an assistant powered by artificial intelligence that’s far beyond anything you can get today.

This type of software—something that responds to natural language and can accomplish many different tasks based on its knowledge of the user—is called an agent. I’ve been thinking about agents for nearly 30 years and wrote about them in my 1995 book The Road Ahead, but they’ve only recently become practical because of advances in AI.

Agents are not only going to change how everyone interacts with computers. They’re also going to upend the software industry, bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons.

In my latest blog post, I dive deep to explain these agents: what they are, why they’ll be drastically different from previous digital assistants like Microsoft Office’s Clippy, how they’ll improve productivity (and change how we spend our downtime), and which industries and professions they’ll alter forever. I also discuss a number of questions, challenges, and concerns—technical ones but also those tackling biases, privacy, and human-to-human connection—that we still have to answer.

You can read the post in full on Gates Notes now. (And if you’ve missed my previous thoughts on AI, you can catch up here and here.)

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