UPDATED -- Bill Gates spoke at the University of Washington's School of Computer Science and Engineering Thursday, providing an overview of some key trends in computer science, and how they are changing the ways we take on societal challenges, namely health care.
First, the best quote, which came in the Q&A period at around 42 minutes in: Many problems in society are just poorly designed algorithms (I paraphrase as I did not take notes and was watching the live stream out of the corner of my eye).
The talk broke no new ground, and focused mainly on disease control and the use of computer modeling to develop better public health policies, using the example of Malaria eradication efforts. Modeling will be put to work in solving numerous societal problems in the coming years, Gates said.
He led with a number of widely discussed trends in comp sci that are poised to transform fields from health to education. Gates' top trends to watch: natural user interface, digital sensors, cloud computing, modeling, machine learning, robotics and pervasive computing.
Watch live streaming video from billgates at livestream.comHat tip to Techcrunch.
