Bill Gates: Biggest impact of AI may be decades away, but society needs to prepare now

Sometimes even Bill Gates' crystal ball is cloudy. The Microsoft co-founder became one of the most successful tech moguls of all time by foreseeing and capitalizing on world-changing trends, but he acknowledged this week that it's difficult to predict when the coming tide of automation and artificial intelligence will have the most impact on the our economy and labor market. The biggest implications could still be decades away, Gates said in a conversation with Microsoft Research Labs director Eric Horvitz on stage at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in Redmond this week. "We have many decades to get this right, but it is a fairly dramatic thing that you want to get society broadly involved in helping you think about with plenty of lead time," he said. When a new technology is emerging, Gates observed, it's easy to imagine widespread adoption is just around the corner.