Bill Gates Would Drop Out of College for These Jobs Today

During a talk at Columbia University, Microsoft founder Bill Gates – famously a college dropout – revealed to students the jobs he would leave school to take today. While Gates was certainly not advising attendees of the Ivy League school should necessarily drop out – the billionaire is a major proponent of education, and has invested heavily in facilities to teach new generations – he was talking hypothetically about the fields into which he would be tempted were he to make the same choice to leave college as he did back in 1975.

The first area that Gates confesses would be of great interest to his younger self, in terms of building a vocation, would be artificial intelligence. “The ability for artificial agents to read and understand material is going to be phenomenal,” Gates said (via Fortune). “Anything connected with that would be an exciting lifetime career.”

According to Gates, the energy sector is one of the biggest growth industries right now, and the pursuit of clean, sustainable energy is of huge interest to him. “The innovations [in energy] will be profound,” Gates explained. “And there are many paths to get to where we need to go.”

Finally, Gates believes that the biotech industry is “moving faster than ever,” and that advances in smart treatments for obesity, cancer, and depression will be vital, as will be DNA vaccines. He even addressed fears that new US President Donald Trump could undermine the country’s vaccine policy over unfounded fears linking inoculations to autism.  “I don’t think Trump will change the U.S. policy stance on vaccines,” Gates said. “There may be a commission but the evidence [for the use of vaccines] is unequivocal.”