I thought the challenge would keep them busy for two or three years. (I picked AP Bio because the test is more than a simple regurgitation of scientific facts-it asks you to think critically about biology.) If you can do that, I said, then you’ll have made a true breakthrough. Make it capable of answering questions that it hasn’t been specifically trained for.
In mid-2022, I was so excited about their work that I gave them a challenge: train an artificial intelligence to pass an Advanced Placement biology exam. I’d been meeting with the team from OpenAI since 2016 and was impressed by their steady progress. The second big surprise came just last year. Charles eventually joined Microsoft, Windows became the backbone of Microsoft, and the thinking we did after that demo helped set the company’s agenda for the next 15 years. I sat with the person who had shown me the demo, a brilliant programmer named Charles Simonyi, and we immediately started brainstorming about all the things we could do with such a user-friendly approach to computing. The first time was in 1980, when I was introduced to a graphical user interface-the forerunner of every modern operating system, including Windows. In my lifetime, I’ve seen two demonstrations of technology that struck me as revolutionary.
