Bill Gates says AI chatbots will teach kids how to read and write

Gates, however, is not perturbed but is impressed by the chatbot's ability to read and write. Interesting Engineeringhas previously reported how ChatGPT can write poems and essays and can even pass standardized tests. But Gates expects the ability of the chatbots to improve even further in the coming 18 months.

A chatbot is my tutor

In a keynote address at the Summit, Gates showered praise on the "fluency" of chatbots to read and write and went on to add that this ability would soon allow them to help teach children and improve their writing and reading.

Gates believes that these improvements, which no technology has ever offered before, will stun us at first as the chatbot will assume the role of reading research assistant and even provide feedback on writing.

ChatGPT has been impressive due to its ability to make human-like conversations and give human-like responses. This has happened since the AI has learned to recognize and recreate human language by itself, instead of relying on the code written by its makers.

Over the next 18 months, Gates expects AI chatbots to get even better at language and maybe even become teacher's aide, before it finally heads to become language tutor in about two years' time.

Gates added that AI would make available private tutoring to a large swath of students, who were previously unable to afford it. Even though services like ChatGPT come with a subscription plan, Gates thinks that it will still make AI-led private tutoring cheaper than hiring a human instructor.

Apart from language, Gates even expects AI to get better at math in the near future, even though it typically tends to struggle at even some basic calculations. Engineers at Microsoft are working to empower AI with more reasoning ability to handle such requirements.

Earlier this month, Interesting Engineeringreported similar views from Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy that is also using GPT-4 to develop virtual tutors to aid learning.