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Bill Gates Reveals He's Working on a 'Personal Agent' for Microsoft

Bill Gates Reveals He's Working on a 'Personal Agent' for Microsoft

By NDTV Correspondent | Updated: 29 January 2015 21:52 IST

Bill Gates, Co-Founder, former CEO and Chairman, and current Technology Advisor at Microsoft, on Wednesday in his third 'Ask Me Anything' session on Reddit revealed a few details about a mysterious project that he is currently working on for the Redmond giant.

Describing the project, Gates said on Reddit, "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."

Gates without dwelling too deep into the topic, further added, "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."

(Also see: Bill Gates, UK Take Lead in $7.5 Billion Pledge for Children's Vaccines)

The Verge speculates that Bill Gates secret project "sounds a lot like something Cortana." We already know that Cortana will be available on Windows 10 desktops as well, apart from Windows 10 mobiles and tablets.

Microsoft at a recent event revealed that voice-based virtual assistant Cortana for desktop has been designed for PC-specific tasks including searching through the system hard drive for photos, documents.

Talking about the HoloLens goggles during the Reddit AMA session, Gates said, "The HoloLens is pretty amazing. Microsoft has put a lot into the chips and the software. It is the start of virtual reality. Making the device so you don't get dizzy or nauseous is really hard - the speed of the alignment has to be super superfast. It will take a few years of software applications being built to realize the full promise of this." For those unaware, Microsoft's HoloLens goggles were unveiled at the Windows 10 Next Chapter event.

(Also see: Windows 10 to Be a Free Upgrade for Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 Users)

Late last week, Microsoft started rolling out its January Technical Preview build of its upcoming Windows 10 OS for desktops, adding features like Cortana, Continuum and more.

Gates' third AMA saw some other interesting questions being answered. When asked about what the next 30 years holds in terms of technology, Gates said, "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."

When asked on what he would have done for a living if Microsoft hadn't worked out, Gates said, "I would probably be a researcher on AI. When I started Microsoft I was worried I would miss the chance to do basic work in that field."

Interestingly, Gates spoke of his envy for Mark Zuckerberg's gift for languages, and his own attempt to learn another language with the Duolingo app, when asked if he had any regrets in life. "I feel pretty stupid that I don't know any foreign languages. I took Latin and Greek in High School and got A's and I guess it helps my vocabulary but I wish I knew French or Arabic or Chinese. I keep hoping to get time to study one of these - probably French because it is the easiest. I did Duolingo for awhile but didn't keep it up. Mark Zuckerberg amazingly learned Mandarin and did a Q&A with Chinese students - incredible."

Gates also gave some advice to a Reddit user about if it is wise to step into a career in programming when most coders may be replaced by "automated solutions" soon. He said, "It is safe for now! It is also a lot of fun and helps shape your thinking on all issues to be more logical. There is a prospect for change in this area for the next generation but that is true for most fields and understanding how to program will always be useful."

Speaking about the technological singularity, and the threat of a strongly-superhuman machine intelligence, Gates said, "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."

The former Microsoft CEO also gave his opinion on Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies in general, "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."

Finally, Gates also shared his opinion on if technology has made the masses less intelligent, saying, "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."

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