Joel on Software Story about Bill Gates: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...
Bonus Bill Gates Pancake Problem story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9223678...
that story just reeks of the blind idolization that goes on with these people. you see it in musk devotees as well. yes, these people are smart, successful, and driven. but they aren't literal incarnations of comic-esque super geniuses or intellectual gods. they are people who's primary power is their drive.
how about just respecting their drive and intelligence rather than putting it on a pedestal? think originally and don't be some dumb slave that bows down to supposed super intelligence. question whether those people really have the capability to understand a certain novel idea, because they may not. they got to where they are because they followed a path and followed it HARD, meaning there are maybe paths they didn't have time to consider.
So this means that Bezos was thinking about data mining and machine learning in a presentation about generalist engineers at least 1/2 decade before this became common place.