AI Tools Have Taken Education To Another Level–Bill Gates

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, Bill Gates has expressed his optimism towards Artificial Intelligence (AI) particularly in the education space.

He explained that AI can aid learning and even simplify complex concepts making them easier to understand.

Gates said this while speaking to innovators in Lagos at an event on Wednesday. The event was tagged ‘Advancing Africa: Unleashing the Power of Youth in Science and Innovation’.

“As a motivated student myself, I loved to learn things. The Internet has had things like Wikipedia and YouTube and so many amazing resources.

“Whenever I want to understand, ‘What is fertiliser? How does it work? Why is it expensive?’ I can go out and get educated and that’s true of math and history and so many things. Now, with AI, it’s even better,” he stated.

According to him, motivated users can do a lot; including debate the late Isaac Newton and simplify complex things, “like you can say ‘explain quantum to a sixth grader’ and it does a very good job”; because AI has taken education tools to a whole new level.

The billionaire businessman also explained that AI tools could be used to simplify seemingly complex subjects and make learning fun for people of all ages, adding that it could help teachers meet their students at their own level of learning.

“We can help teachers crack the homework automatically. We can create personalised sets of questions for students. But when it comes to that motivation, when kids get discouraged or confused, we’ll try and do some of that with the AI,” he said.

“But as of right now, for the non-typical student who isn’t just going to go out and teach themselves, it’s a combination of all this amazing material plus investing in the teachers,” he said.