Bill Gates Says AI Chatbots Will Teach Children To Read, Write In 18 Months

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in a keynote talk on Tuesday at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego said that AI chatbots can help children learn to read and hone their writing skills in 18 months' time.

He said, "The AI's will get to that ability, to be as good a tutor as any human ever could."

Mr Gates is incredibly impressed with AI chatbots and said that AI will soon help students to improve their own reading and writing skills in ways technology never could before. He said, "Today's chatbots have incredible fluency at being able to read and write."

"At first, we'll be most stunned by how it helps with reading - being a reading research assistant - and giving you feedback on writing," said Mr Gates.

During the keynote, Mr Gates said that teaching writing skills has proven to be an incredibly difficult task for a computer. He added that high-cognitive exercises used to be tough for developers to replicate in code. But now AI chatbot has the ability to recognise and recreate human-like language changes that dynamic, he noted.

"If you just took the next 18 months, the AIs will come in as a teacher's aide and give feedback on writing," said Mr Gates. "And then they will amp up what we're able to do in math."

Mr Gates said that AI Chatbots will be more affordable and accessible. "This should be a leveller," he said. "Because having access to a tutor is too expensive for most students - especially having that tutor adapt and remember everything that you've done and look across your entire body of work."