Microsoft co-founder offers comments in reddit AMA

Feb 28, 2017 09:30 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates participated in a new reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session a few hours ago, providing some comments on a wide variety of topics, including philanthropy, technology, and politics.

One of the most interesting topics covered by Bill Gates was the Microsoft vs. Apple saga that concerns the graphical user interface which has the two technology giants put against each other in a matter of who copied whom to create the way their operating systems looked like in their early days.

Bill Gates provided an explanation in his typical way, trying not to upset anyone, but also to shed some light on this, pointing out that the graphical interface was actually created by Xerox, so both Apple and Microsoft kind of copied it from them.

“The main ‘copying’ that went on relative to Steve and me is that we both benefited from the work that Xerox Parc did in creating graphical interface - it wasn’t just them but they did the best work. Steve hired Bob Belville, I hired Charles Simonyi. We didn’t violate any IP rights Xerox had but their work showed the way that led to the Mac and Windows,” Bill Gates said.

Technology used to develop cures for diseases

Bill Gates went on to explain that technology has evolved a lot lately and he expects companies involved in this industry, including here Google and Microsoft, to help address a series of problems, such as the lack of vaccines for certain diseases.

“The big milestone is when computers can read and understand information like humans do. There is a lot of work going on in this field - Google, Microsoft, Facebook, academia,… Right now computers don’t know how to represent knowledge so they can’t read a text book and pass a test. Another whole area is vaccines. We need a vaccine for HIV, Malaria and TB and I hope we have them in the next 10-15 years,” he said.

In case you’re wondering, Bill Gates hasn’t talked too much about Microsoft, choosing instead to focus on philanthropy, technology in general, and politics.