Loading summary
Transcript45 lines
- [00:00]
Host/Producer
Sam.
- [00:32]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
Going to ask you anything generic or anything I've heard you answer already. I'm going to be a little selfish and ask you questions that I try to answer for myself a lot of the time. Maybe like, you know, there's no better person to learn from. So we do this once in a month, Bill. And we primarily cater to the young entrepreneur in India. The idea is to get really good people on the show and help a young 20 year old boy or girl in India who is looking to become an entrepreneur. Give them advice, guidance, help them learn from what you might have learned already. I've met Bill a bunch of times. I think the very first time I met you was when I caught you at VEF and bugged you for an hour with random questions a few years ago. I joined Bill's pledge last year.
- [01:33]
Bill Gates
Thank you.
- [01:34]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
The one thing I want to clarify is a lot of Indians, when they hear about an Indian sign on to the pledge. I think there's four of us, right? We're all from Bangalore and all of us are friends. People somehow assume that the money is going out of India, the money which is going to make society better. It's actually not the case. And I would also like to say, I think the Gates foundation who I worked with in the past, we've done a school project together. We're doing something around malnutrition together. I think the impact and the effort that they're putting into India in improving society is great. And I hope you guys continue this association with India for a long time. Do you want to talk a little bit about your relationship with India and how it's evolved over the last many years?
- [02:28]
Bill Gates
Well, I've had a fantastic relationship with India starting with the Microsoft experience where we hired some very smart IT graduates, brought them to Seattle. Later they go back, create a development center for us that's now in four locations, 25,000 people. And it's of course a lot of the amazing people I work with and have so much fun in the Microsoft success with are part of the team who hired from India. Top of that list is Satya, who now is doing a great job as CEO. So in my digital first career, the connection to India was fun and made a huge difference in what the company was able to achieve. It was during that time that I was kind of learning, oh wow, India is such a study in contrast, you know, first class in so many ways, but still a lot of poverty and challenges. And I was beginning to think, okay, how do I give this money back? Together with Melinda and So she came over as we were starting to do foundation work. I start the foundation, I fund it in the year 2000. So I'm 45 years old and still full time. I stay full time for another eight years. But India becomes an important place for us because we realize that vaccines were this missing thing. And it was a crime that these diarrheal rotavirus vaccines were getting to the rich kids. So, you know, I get to know serum, I learn about making cheap vaccines. You know, the Indian government at the time had not adopted new vaccines for a long time. You know, so how do we as foreigners form partnerships and not come across in the wrong way? So it's a heck of a learning curve. Another big program we had here at the start called Avahan was about making sure that the HIV epidemic didn't explode by making sure that the sex workers were insisting on condominium so that the numbers would stay small. And that was also quite successful and very much a partnership with the government. Other than the us, this is the country we spend the most money in. We have a fantastic team of people here.
- [05:11]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
Do you want to put a number to that in terms of the scale of how much the foundation does in India?
- [05:15]
Bill Gates
Yeah, we do. If you take direct and indirect, it'd be close to a billion a year. We help buy vaccines through gavi, we fund a lot of different things. Our foundation is about 9 billion a year and our health is our biggest, agriculture is our second biggest. Education, although super important, is not super high percentage because we're so specialized on the health stuff and we've had so much progress on that. We want to make sure we do that super well.
- [05:54]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
I'm not going to ask you anything generic or anything I've heard you answer already. I'm going to be a little selfish and ask you questions that I try to answer for myself a lot of the time maybe like, you know, there's no better person to learn from when it comes to society at large. A lot of really wealthy people today are virtue signaling in the manner that being wealthy is a bad thing. Somehow it's starting to seem like the class and race divides of yesterday has become the new wealth divide, has become that thing in society today which is very socialist in the very thinking of it, inherently socialist when people think of it that way. And when I go on my own path of philanthropy, I often ask myself, like even at the pledge, I find myself asking this question, does philanthropy in that sense truly make sense? And me as a 37 year old who's starting on this path. How do I think about this?
- [07:01]
Bill Gates
Well, there are some things that only philanthropy can do because they require taking risks and the basic needs of the people, the safety net. That's not really the role of philanthropy because you need to count on that year in and year out. And the government, through the political process needs to decide that. And of course, the market based system is where most of this wealth comes from. And anything the market can do, like how many restaurants like this should we have, the market does that so well. But we know there are diseases and challenges that either the government's not innovative enough or the market opportunity's not enough, that the two big actors, private sector, which is like 70% of the economy, and the government, which is like 28%, this third sector, which is only a few percent, can step in to do. When we had democratic capitalism, there was always this concern that the poorest would kind of overtax the rich and that the incentive system would be broken down. In fact, that really hasn't happened. You have in northern Europe very high tax rates, but even there the incentive system works. So I think it's important to separate out. Is my country's tax system as progressive as it should be? So when you look at billionaires, do they kind of have more than they should? And then if you look at whatever the billionaires have left over after they paid their taxes, are they engaging in thoughtful philanthropy? Are they kind of spoiling their children who are kind of arrogant to view themselves in a class of their own and being kind of extravagant in what they do? And that's very hard to draw the line. What is that responsibility? Even with the Giving Pledge, this idea of give back half, some people say, well, half. If you have $4 billion, that means for your own consumption and your family, you're keeping 2 billion. Well, it's not a upper bound. We'll have people who will give away. But it's great to debate these things because we're not trying to take over government functions. We couldn't possibly afford to do that. But a lot of the best government programs, if you look into them, some philanthropists funded the pilot, brought together talented people. And often you're using the same skills that caused you to be able to be successful and now using it on behalf of equality. You know, how do you design a school or take AI technology into a farmer's advisory system? And that experience, that sense of urgency can be very helpful in philanthropic innovation.
- [10:21]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
I'm with you when you say that the anomalies of capitalism, the billionaires on the very end should be taxed higher. But if you had to redesign society, do you think capitalism over socialism any day?
- [10:34]
Bill Gates
Well, capitalism gives you the freedom to start a new business and try out a new product. And the idea of okay, who do people choose to buy from? That's a form of freedom because it's not based on your background or your class or something like that. And so the discovery power of the capitalistic market to oh, this guy knows how to do this cheaper, this guy knows how to do this better. Oh, you know, people are interested in that kind of a movie, you know, tops down systems. Even though with lots of digital data you could run a top down system less ineptly than say the Soviets or the North Koreans did. But still the discovery process and the price comparison that takes place, it is the fundamental way things should be done. But government has to look for monopolies, it has to create the safety net. And you can argue about the relative role of the government in education and health care, but they need to make sure that everybody gets those services right.
- [11:50]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
You're looking fitter than I remember seeing you the last time.
- [11:54]
Bill Gates
Yeah, I know. I've been playing more tennis, a little more pickleball.
- [11:59]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
Is pickleball really picking up that much?
- [12:01]
Bill Gates
It is in India, in North America. It's unbelievable. Particularly California, Florida. I mean, it's actually more people play pickleball now than play tennis. So it's actually passed it by.
- [12:14]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
The last time we met, I kept bugging you about what supplements do you take now that you have gotten even healthier looking. Is there any hack that you would like to recommend to young entrepreneurs?
- [12:27]
Bill Gates
I take vitamins because there's no downside. So getting blood tests every once in a while and seeing if there's anomalies, that's good. And now there's a thing called the Grail test. It's not covered by all insurance in the US so probably not by much in India. But if you can afford it, that is almost magical at helping to see cancers way before other techniques would catch those.
- [12:57]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
So we have a foundation bill which does work around climate. It's called rain matter. Just for the sake of not having this debate publicly, let's between us assume climate change is real. I've heard you speak about the Breakthrough Energy Fund. Energy transition appears to be a big opportunity for young entrepreneurs to work in over the next decade. Are there any sub facets of that? If I were a 22 year old boy or girl wanting to build a career in energy transition, where do you think There are most tailwinds. What factor should I focus on?
- [13:38]
Bill Gates
Well, because the sources of emissions are so broad, we need deep innovation in many, many areas. So for electricity generation we've got to make solar cells better, we have to make off wind cheaper. There's probably something dramatic that can happen in nuclear fission, hopefully something dramatic that can happen in nuclear fusion. In the long run, that may be the cheapest source of electricity. And now we have some companies trying to get there. You know, over in the agricultural space, rice is a huge source of emissions and there's new ideas about genetics and direct seeding. With cows you can vaccinate them, change the genetics. In the industrial side you can try to get cheap green hydrogen or you can try and change the process. For example steel, instead of using a form of coal, you could use electricity for the reduction. And so I'd say there's probably 20 areas that if you want to help in climate innovation, these things are begging. And I think it will be startups and of course they'll have tie ups with big companies. But the open mindedness, most of these breakthroughs won't come straight out of the big companies.
- [15:13]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
Is there a starting point though? Let's assume I have no capital at hand and I'm 22, starting off in Bangalore. How do I go about attempting to be a part of the energy transition solution?
- [15:29]
Bill Gates
The ideal is actually to find a philanthropist. Breakthrough Energy has a fellows program where we look for people with really good early stage ideas and we do that as a grant with a little bit of options, but you don't need a business plan. Then if you get past that stage, either on your own or with fellows type grant, then there are venture capital groups that really specialize in finding climate technologies and they're willing to fund very risky stuff. And I know all of them, including Breakthrough Energy, are like, gosh, are we missing some in India? And so now there's a network, you know, if you have a good idea, you know, if you pass it to me, if non, non, pass to me, there's a bunch of us venture capitalists and hopefully some who would also come in domestically. So for risk capital, this is a very good time. If you have something that looks attractive, could have a significant impact.
- [16:35]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
Artificial general intelligence. You know more about this than most people. How do you think society changes? If you could paint a dystopian and a utopian picture, let's say there is AGI. What happens to the society post AGI from jobs? What is money, what is society, what is family standpoint?
- [17:02]
Bill Gates
Well, the amazing thing about this technology is we know it can help in key areas. We know it can create educational tutors. Lot of great pilot work. Several projects here in India. Salcon in the US is the one that may have started the first and is showing great results on that. So the potential is incredible. And if we knew that all it did was make a lot of jobs, say three times more productive. So doctors are three times more productive. So, you know, the demand for more people to see doctors and get good advice, that's probably good for software. You know, we'll still need those software engineers. Well, we may take some of the extra productivity for quality, some for quantity, but we're not going to, you know, start not needing software engineers. The fact that over time, and we don't know the rate of improvement and there doesn't seem to be an upper bound if it gets so that it's a complete replacement, that it can do all the medical advice or it can do all the coding, that's a world of excess where, you know, it's gotta be wonderful in the sense that, you know, handicapped people, old people, you're, you know, taking care of them, you're shortening the work week. But you can get to a point where the very organizing principles of society and the whole philosophy about what you value, that world of excess, which I personally think won't come in the next 20 years, but I can't guarantee that, you know, I was personally not expecting this reading and writing breakthrough to take place just because GPT3 got scaled up to GPT4. But that really showed something profound in knowledge representation had taken place. So most of us are working on the, hey, let's go build that tutor and that health advisor and farmer advisor. But while we do that, we should be aware that, okay, so much extra productivity will surprise people and require us to rethink about a lot of different things.
- [19:40]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
So when Sam Altman was in India, he fielded a bunch of questions around ChatGPT and generative AI per se. When these large language models take as much computational power as they require, an Indian entrepreneur who has lesser access to capital compared to a Western one, how does an Indian entrepreneur compete with the west in this domain without the same kind of access?
- [20:09]
Bill Gates
You know, that's a very good question. So if you're an entrepreneur who's trying to build foundational models, models from the very ground up, like Google does or Microsoft with OpenAI does, and they have four or five others, you have to raise, you know, two, $3 billion. Now, maybe some government will decide because you're domestic, they'll help you do that or provide some of that. But there should either be like 0, 1 or 2 cases where an Indian company goes after that very base level and hopefully focuses on some specific Indian applications of that. Most of the opportunity is at the level above where you're saying, okay, let's take this and help architects or let's take this and help this group of farmers or the Indian legal system is very different. Believe me, what legal things are done for the US won't apply here. But just imagine if you could make everybody in the legal system four times more productive. That changes justice because right now the backlog is kind of nightmarish and here comes a potential solution. So I'd say there's 1,000 opportunities where you either pick or just use one of those base level models, but you're doing the extra data value added user interface to go after a particular application. That I think is where we'll see the most activity. If somebody's bold enough to say no, I'm going after foundational piece. You know, screw you, Bill Gates, you don't know. And I say, hey, good for you. You know, I could be wrong. We are in. You know, this is all very new stuff.
- [22:06]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
Are there any arbitrages in place, like a unique advantage India, either by virtue of population or the demographic diversity has that will help a young entrepreneur focus on a particular facet around building this or is there a legal arbitrage? Is regulation better here than there?
- [22:30]
Bill Gates
I think it's very possible that the health advice piece, that the US will overregulate that and just see the risk and not the benefit and that middle income countries, and I put India at the top of the list, will engage in a dialogue and drive very aggressively to get the benefit. But yes, I would expect definitely in health, definitely in agriculture, a lot of the most exciting, fast moving things will be here in India. Education. I think everybody's going to be doing it, including India.
- [23:12]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
I've seen this happen in Indonesia. Do you think the business of delivering medical advice and prescribing people, not with a human on the other side, but a model per se. Do you think the potential for that is big in India for young entrepreneurs to focus on?
- [23:29]
Bill Gates
Yes, you know, there's going to be a quality bar and yes. And you know, maybe at first it's okay, pregnant women or people dealing with diabetes because it's easier then to think through all the possible questions and make sure the quality's right. But eventually, you bet your Lifelong medical agent that takes all your sensor data and how you felt when you eat this or drink that. It'll be there and it'll be reading the latest literature, and it'll be super helpful to you.
- [24:10]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
Okay, last question to you, Bill. If you were 25 years old, living in India, no crazy skill set at hand, and about $100,000 of money to start a business with, what would you do today?
- [24:27]
Bill Gates
I'd probably build. Pick some AI thing and just use the Google Microsoft platforms and go on top of that and try and. Because I'd be in touch with the customer so well and improving my data. Keep ahead. And I'd say, okay, who's the most demanding customer for this? And go after that. It might be fun, you know, like clearing legal backlogs. You know, that one kind of fascinates me because it's a mechanism that helps all business activity. I'd envy the guys who get to work on the foundation models. I'd say, damn, even I sort of envy them. Because when I was young, I thought, gosh, when is AI really going to make the breakthrough? It took a lot longer than I expected. I'm glad now I get to play a supportive role, help shape it a bit. Satya engages me. And now we're using AI in our foundation work, whether it's drug discovery or all these things. So we can be way more ambitious than we were before it came along.
- [25:43]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
I happened to meet Sathya and Sundar when I was in the US and we were having dinner at a certain place together. And these guys seem to talk about AGI in a very precocious manner, like it's much closer than anybody's thinking it is. Do you think that there could be one day when suddenly we are surprised, like a couple of years down the line?
- [26:08]
Bill Gates
There's so much. There's not really a really good definition. These models already today, when you have lots and lots of documents, more than a human could read in a lifetime, it is able to find things and reason across these documents in a superhuman way. When you think about a lawsuit or a drug filing and anything that gets to be over, say, 10,000 pages, human cognition, even a great specialist person, you got 10,000 pages, I dare you. And these things, it's not just keyword search. This is semantic representation of that level of complexity. So we're already superhuman in a dimension that is kind of surprising. I mean, I thought robots would be taking over the warehouse 10 years before they'd be studying our legal and regulatory documents. And we know that we have brute force scale up. We have a lot of external algorithms to help the AI know how hard to work. I mean, most people don't realize today it works exactly the same amount. Where it puts out the next word is. And it doesn't think in advance. It doesn't think, okay, I have to write this poem. Let me figure it all out. No, it's. It's generating word by word and so getting it to go faster when it's easy or take more time. Like math problems. We all laugh because it's actually quite bad at certain type of recursive math things like Sudoku puzzles, which are trivial. In fact, if you say to the AI, put this into algebraic form and then give it to a tiny little solver, it's perfect. But its current algorithm is this single linear pass print. The most probable token single. And so there's a lot of control architecture work that's being played around with to deal with these quality issues. Clearly, humans, we think, okay, for this problem. It's just a joke. Blurt something out. They're asking me for medical advice or marriage advice. I better, you know, really think through the implications. And so the control system as well as the extra scale is going to drive improvements at some rate that could be quite rapid.
- [28:48]
Host/Producer
No.
- [28:49]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
Thank you so much, Bill, for having taken the time with me today and look forward to seeing you in May California. Thank you.
- [29:07]
Host/Producer
Hi, guys. We are in den today. I'm trying to fruit a new very interesting guest and we're going to do something fun.
- [29:21]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
What else we here for? What else we here for? Did you know that your baby
- [29:32]
Host/Producer
sa. No, I'm actually being serious.
- [29:36]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
Did you know that your baby.
- [29:45]
Host/Producer
This is our beautiful, beautiful venue. We have mark that Sheldon. Everyone's setting up lights. This is where everyone's going to be sitting. We're going to have a live screen monitor here, which I'll probably be looking at a boom broad mic. And that's what we're going to place on top of the two speakers. Hi, Chetan. It's the first time we're working together. What are your thoughts? You don't look stressed at all. That's called a skimmer that we're gonna put over the gas. That's our spot and that's how big the skimmer is. I am also worried about other things. So let's see then how it looks. And then take a bowl. We're gonna change the rules. It doesn't look so nice, does it?
- [31:13]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
Is that okay?
- [31:14]
Bill Gates
Yeah, that was fantastic.
- [31:20]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
How does it feel?
- [31:21]
Host/Producer
Good. A little bit.
- [31:24]
Interviewer (possibly an Indian entrepreneur or journalist)
A little bit more. Say something late.