Bill Gates gave an interview to The Verge, in which he discussed the issues raised in the series What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates by Netflix, including artificial intelligence.

In the first episode of the Netflix series, Gates uses ChatGPT to ask for advice on sports. When asked how he uses AI in his everyday life, Gates said that he often turns to the chatbot to get explanations on unfamiliar topics and help with writing. Most often, he uses the built-in feature in Microsoft Teams to summarize meetings.

One of the main questions in the interview was whether Bill Gates sees artificial intelligence as a threat. He answered that he sees greater potential in the application of artificial intelligence in areas such as education and medicine, and that AI-based tools can help in these areas. According to him, over the next decade, AI will increase productivity in many areas, and “this is very good news.”

Nevertheless, he does not rule out the possibility that AI will be used for evil purposes, but in general, he sees more positive things. Speaking about disinformation, Gates is also convinced that AI does not pose a big threat except for creating disruptive devices, and that good things can balance everything out.

One of the biggest disadvantages of artificial intelligence is its huge energy consumption. In this context, Bill Gates said that Microsoft, like many other tech giants, is looking for opportunities to use clean energy to reduce pollution. He notes that “the actual increase from AI data centers, even in the extreme case, will be much less than 10%.”

“So, the net benefit we’re getting from AI helping us in our scientific discovery of, okay, how do you make steel? How do you make meat? What’s the weather going to be like? The AI benefits exceed the fact that that’s just another electricity load, but not a load nearly as big as electric cars or electric heat pumps or switching the industrial economy to use electricity instead of direct use of hydrocarbons,” says Gates.

Another question was whether Bill Gates would have done anything differently while he was running Microsoft. The businessman replied that he had learned a lot during his time as CEO and was satisfied with what the company had done during that time. Gates also believes that his successors have picked up the work and “it’s still a great company.”

Late last year, Gates expressed a similar opinion. He noted that OpenAI’s large language models will not see a big leap between GPT-4 and GPT-5, but nevertheless said that in the short term, AI could be useful, particularly for the healthcare sector.