Gates made the comments within the context of a much larger conversation about the future role of technology in education with Jessie Woolley-Wilson, the CEO of DreamBox Learning, according to a report by The Epoch Times.

"AI has, ever since the focus became machine learning, it's achieved some unbelievable milestones," Gates told Woolley-Wilson. "You know, it can listen to speech and recognize speech better than humans. It can recognize images and videos better than humans. The area that it was essentially useless in was in reading and writing. You could not take, say, a biology textbook and read it and pass the AP exam."

While AI may not be good enough to "teach" humanity yet, Gates says that that time is not far off. "We have enough sample sets of those things being done well that the training can be done," he added. "So, I'd say that is a very worthwhile milestone, is to engage in a dialogue where you're helping to understand what they're missing. And we're not that far."