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Bill Gates was on Reddit earlier today, for an AMA [Ask Me Anything] that touched on his opinions about the future of entertainment and technology, his philanthropic work, and some personal stuff. It's not the first time he has engaged with Reddit, but he offered up some interesting points.
When asked about the next 30 years of technology, Gates said it will prove to be even more fruitful than the last. "There will be more progress in the next 30 years than ever," he wrote. "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.
"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. 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."
Gates also talked about the Microsoft's recently-announced plans for virtual reality. "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 fast. It will take a few years of software applications being built to realize the full promise of this."
Speaking on personal issues, Gates also expressed regret about never learning a second language. He shared a picture of his dogs. And he spoke about his work to help other people
"There are a lot of great causes. It is important not to be frozen trying to pick since it is important to specialize and really learn the area you are trying to help. We picked health inequity as our global thing and educational inequity as our national thing and most of our projects fit into these areas. Part of the beauty of philanthropy is the diversity of causes and approaches that get tried. It is far more risk oriented than government or private sector spending which makes it special when it is done right."
