Microsoft’s Bill Gates has taken to Reddit for his third Ask Me Anything, only to further prove his status as a humble philanthropist, tech legend and just, a totally likeable human (this category of human is, IMHO, underrated when there are so many jerks around, so bloody KUDOS). They just don’t make rich guys like this anymore.

Being a total dad, Gates introduced his AMA with a cute as sin gif to kick off a few hours of answering questions from Reddit. Covering philanthropy, tech, the future, his doges and artificial intelligence, here are 6 things we learned from Gates’ AMA.

THE FUTURE LOOKS LIKE BIG HERO 6

When asked about what the next 30 years will look like for Microsoft, Gates didn’t disappoint:

“There will be more progress in the next 30 years than ever. Even in the next 10 problems like vision and speech understanding and translation will be very good. Mechanical robot tasks like picking fruit or moving a hospital patient will be solved. Once computers/robots get to a level of capability where seeing and moving is easy for them then they will be used very extensively.  One project I am working on with Microsoft is the Personal Agent which will remember everything and help you go back and find things and help you pick what things to pay attention to. The idea that you have to find applications and pick them and they each are trying to tell you what is new is just not the efficient model – the agent will help solve this. It will work across all your devices.”

On life-extending research, Gates doesn’t see the priority: “It seems pretty egocentric while we still have malaria and TB for rich
people to fund things so they can live longer. It would be nice to live
longer though I admit.”

BUT SUPER ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS SCARY AF

“I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned.”

You heard the man, build your bunker and go off the grid right now.

BITCOIN STILL HAS A WAY TO GO

“Bitcoin is an exciting new technology. For our Foundation work we are doing digital currency to help the poor get banking services. We don’t use bitcoin specifically for two reasons. One is that the poor shouldn’t have a currency whose value goes up and down a lot compared to their local currency. Second is that if a mistake is made in who you pay then you need to be able to reverse it so anonymity wouldn’t work.  Overall financial transactions will get cheaper using the work we do and Bitcoin related approaches.  Making sure that it doesn’t help terrorists is a challenge for all new technology.”

THE WORLD NEEDS BETTER TEACHERS

“We have some tough scientific challenges like an HIV cure. However the toughest thing is helping teachers learn from the best
teachers. There are great teachers and the kids who get them are lucky.
We should be able to spread those skills but the current system doesn’t
do it very well.”


INFORMATION SATURATION ISN’T MAKING US DUMB – JUST WIDELY INFORMED

“Technology is not making people less intelligent. If you just look at
the complexity people like in Entertainment you can see a big change
over my lifetime. Technology is letting people get their questions
answered better so they stay more curious. It makes it easier to know a
lot of topics which turns out to be pretty important to contribute to
solving complex problems.“



HIS DOGS ARE CALLED OREO AND NILLA

And they are adorable. :’)

H/T Reddit.
Lead image by Jim Watson via Getty.

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