"Didn't Expect ChatGPT To Get So Good": Bill Gates To Sam Altman

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in a recent episodes of the 'Unconfuse Me' podcast told OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that he "didn't expect ChatGPT to get so good, it blows my mind."

Mr Gates expressed that he was skeptical about the capabilities of ChatGPT. He admitted, "I was privileged to see your work as it evolved, and I was very skeptical. I was very skeptical." 

Further in the discussion, they spoke about a range of topics including how Artificial Intelligence (AI) should be regulated, the biggest question that governments around the world are debating, AI's problems, AI impact on society and more. 

Talking about the impact of AI on the society, Mr Altman said, "The part that I find potentially a little scary is just the speed with which society is going to have to adapt and that the labor market will change," Altman said. Mr Altman said that "the hypothetical idea that we already have done something really bad by launching ChatGPT" is something that bothers him. 

"Although we are giving something up here, in some sense we are going to have things that are smarter than us," he told Mr Gates. "If we can get into this world of post scarcity, we will find new things to do." 

Mr Gates also said that unlike other past technologies revolutions, the AI will be "fastest by far". 

"We've seen that with the great technological revolutions of the past. Each technological revolution has gotten faster, and this will be the fastest by far. That's the part that I find potentially a little scary, is the speed with which society is going to have to adapt, and that the labour market will change," Mr Altman added. 

Talking about the milestones in the next two years, Mr Altman said, ""Currently, GPT-4 most questions 10,000 times, one of those 10,000 is probably pretty good, but it doesn't always know which one, and you'd like to get the best response of 10,000 each time, and so that increase in reliability will be important."