Bill and Melinda Gates believe the dream of AI is 'finally arriving' — but there's one huge problem

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bill and melinda gates

Bill Gates and Melinda Gates  Scott Olson/Getty Images

We're in the golden era of machine learning and artificial intelligence, but there's one big problem, according to Bill Gates and Melinda Gates.

There aren't enough women in the space.

"[Artificial intelligence] is the most exciting thing going on right now — it’s the holy grail that anyone in computer science has been thinking about," Bill Gates said on stage at Vox Media's Code Conference on Wednesday.

Speech recognition and computer vision have seen more progress in the last five years than ever before.  

As Bill put it, "The dream is finally arriving."

But Melinda said that stats around women in computer science are troubling: Only 17% of computer science graduates today are women, down from a peak of 37%.

"We ought to care more about women being in computer science," she said. "You need women participating in these things."

If women aren't active in the space, it will influence the things that artificial intelligence research is conducted around and applied to, she reasoned. 

As interviewer Walt Mossberg joked on stage, women's participation in artificial intelligence can't just be limited to being the voice of AI assistants like Amazon's Alexa or Microsoft's Cortana.

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Jillian was most recently an enterprise technology editor based in San Francisco.  She started at Insider as an intern on the technology desk in 2013 and rose to a senior reporter position, covering Alphabet, Facebook, and ecommerce. After three years at the site, she left to spend time freelance writing abroad, before taking reporting positions at CNBC and then at Forbes, where she covered Alphabet, Silicon Valley culture, and artificial intelligence. She returned to Insider in March 2020 and worked on the enterprise technology desk until August 2021.  Jillian graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications with a degree in magazine journalism and information management and technology.