Elon Musk criticizes Bill Gates’ “limited understanding” of AI

Elon Musk has accused Microsoft founder Bill Gates of having a “limited understanding” of artificial intelligence (AI), in response to an essay Gates published about AI and its possible applications.

AI has become the latest buzzword to hit the internet, with the rise of popular programs like ChatGPT blowing up on social media.

ChatGPT answers prompts and can generate a full response, and videos have already started to go viral of college students being caught out using them to write essays, among other things.

The use of AI on a more global scale, in other ways such as through art or music, is still yet to be discovered, as it’s still somewhat niche, though naturally there is a subsect of people who work extensively with AI who understand it far better.

According to Elon Musk, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is not one of those people, however. In a tweet posted on March 27, Musk said: “I remember the early meetings with Gates. His understanding of AI was limited. Still is.”

I remember the early meetings with Gates. His understanding of AI was limited. Still is.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2023

This came just days after Gates published his essay, The Age of AI has Begun, in which he called ChatGPT just the second demonstration of technology that he had ever considered “revolutionary.” In 2019, Microsoft backed ChatGPT creator OpenAI with $1 billion.

Gates and Musk have always had somewhat of a difficult relationship, at least as it appears online with comments made.

In 2020, Musk claimed that his conversations with Gates had always been “underwhelming”, despite Gates’ celebrations in 2018 of Musk’s work building an AI team to beat the best in Dota 2.

It’s clear that Elon isn’t Gates’ biggest fan, and with Bill now working predominantly on his philanthropy projects, this definitely gives Elon more time to establish himself as more of a figurehead in artificial intelligence than Gates.