If Microsoft failed, Bill Gates would have been an AI researcher

When asked what he would have done if Microsoft hadn't succeeded, Bill Gates replied as follows:
"I would probably work as an AI researcher. I was concerned I would miss the opportunity to perform fundamental work in that subject when I started at Microsoft. Although Gates and Paul Allen created Microsoft in 1975, artificial intelligence was a popular area of study in the 1950s and 1960s. Scientists and researchers learned that computers could solve math and word problems, outperform humans at checkers, and even speak English. Around this time, Gates was still a prep student and was beginning to gain attention for his extraordinary skills in computer and software programming."

But little than a year after Gates arrived at Harvard, the US and British governments stopped funding any exploratory AI research that wasn't supported directly by their own governments. Following that, the nations went through what was referred to as an "AI winter" for almost five years. Beginning approximately 1987, there was an even longer "winter" that lasted for around another ten years.

Gates claims that he is "in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence," which also includes Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, despite his long-standing interest in AI. Hawking thinks AI will one day "outsmart financial markets" and "out-invent human researchers," while Musk thinks a "Terminator-like situation" is possible.

It's interesting to consider how artificial intelligence may have evolved had Bill Gates begun his research in that area 40 years earlier. Either way, you might all be subject to machines by this point. Given how successful Microsoft has been, you'll never know