Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has outlined how he thinks the software giant should compete with OpenAI and Google after 50 years in the software market. If time travel were a reality, the billionaire would go back a few years to turn Microsoft into an AI-focused company.
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Microsoft can be called one of the most successful companies in history. This is supported by the fact that not long ago the software giant became the most valuable company in the world, overtaking Apple and Nvidia in capitalization, which was facilitated by the cloud business and, obviously, achievements in the field of AI.
Gates apparently shared his ideas about what the company could do next as Microsoft turns 50 this year. He even suggested that he could reinvent Microsoft as an AI company to take on OpenAI and Google. The billionaire has expressed similar thoughts before. “Someone can raise billions of dollars today to start an AI company with just a few ideas,” Gates told CNBC last year.
Bill Gates has admitted that it will take a huge amount of money to launch a new AI company, but it has a chance to catch up with OpenAI, which has been the leader in the AI segment for two years. Interestingly, Gates wants to occupy a unique niche in the AI field to meet specific needs, unlike the constantly emerging new startups, many of which aim to create “artificial general intelligence” (AGI).
Despite the promise of AI, Gates believes that it will be nearly impossible to scale Microsoft’s success. He added that AI opens up new opportunities for early-stage startups, which need to understand the landscape and find their niche to succeed. The billionaire attributes Microsoft’s success in part to its belief in software development, but he doubts that the same will be true for AI. “Just believing in AI is not that unique. So I’m going to have to come up with some unique perspective on how to build AI systems that other people haven’t understood,” Gates said.