“Computing is a good historical example where lower costs actually caused the overall market to grow.”
Bill Gates
The Year Ahead 2026: Optimism with footnotes (Primary source)
In this blog post, Bill Gates writes he remains optimistic about global progress thanks to innovation and AI, but warns funding cuts, inequality, climate change, and AI risks temper that hope and require urgent action.
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“The effects of this disruption [Artificial Intelligence] are hard to model. Sometimes, when a game-changing technology improves rapidly, it drives more demand at lower cost and, by making the world richer, increases demand in other areas. For example, AI makes software developers at least twice as efficient, which makes coding cheaper while also creating demand elasticity for code. (Computing is a good historical example where lower costs actually caused the overall market to grow.)”
Bill Gates
“Few skills are more important than knowing how to distinguish what’s true from what’s false.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“The axiom that you learn more from your failures than your successes is trite but absolutely true.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone. It will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“Any company that stays the same will be passed by very quickly.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.”
— Leonardo da Vinci Primary source“The man who is good at making an excuse, is seldom good at any thing else.”
— Benjamin Franklin Secondary source“I don’t think AI’s impact will be as dramatic as the Industrial Revolution, but it certainly will be as big as the introduction of the PC.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“The noblest question in the world is, what good may I do in it?”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary sourceArtificial Intelligence Computer Programming Technology Economics