Bill Gates says he talked with Google employees about AI, health care

Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft, says he talked to Google researchers on Monday about the application of artificial-intelligence technology in health care.

The intersection of AI and health care is a longtime area of interest for Google. Researchers there have explored the use of AI algorithms for making predictions based on medical records. And Verily, another subsidiary of Alphabet alongside Google, is solely focused on health care. While Microsoft and Google are arch-competitors in many areas, including cloud computing and artificial intelligence research, the visit is an example of how Gates’ broad interest in technology trumps Microsoft’s historical rivalries with other tech companies.

Gates brought up the visit spontaneously after a person in the audience at the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Symposium at Stanford University in California, held near Google’s Mountain View headquarters, asked him about how to ensure that AI will operate ethically.

Gates talked about the use of AI in weapons systems and autonomous vehicles before arriving at the subject of health care.

“In the medical field, you know, we just don’t have doctors. Most people are born and die in Africa without coming near to a doctor,” said Gates, who is co-chair of the nonprofit Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which concerns itself with improving global health among other things.

“We’re doing a lot of work with analyzing ultrasound, and we can do things like