Bill Gates on possibility, AI, and humanity
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A eye for material science, biology. IT is A A gigging tic accelerator. So take whatever Green product you thinks can be the hardest to get the zero Green premium, rethink how hard that's going to be because the AI tools are so phenomenal at accelerating all of these past of innovation.

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i'm read often and I worry a thinker.

We wanna know what happens if in the future everything breaks. Humanity is way, but we can possibly get right if we leverage technology like A I and our collective effort effectively.

We're speaking with technologists, ambitious builders and deep fingers across many fields, A I, geopolitics, media, health care.

education and more. These conversations showcase another kind of guest, whether it's inflections, pie OpenAI, GPT, four or other A I tools. Each episode, we use A I to enhance in advance or discussion.

In each episode, we seek out the brightest version of the future and learn what i'll take to get there.

This is possible.

How do you set off on a topic of discussion for someone with as much going on as bill gates? He's a technologist, business leader and philanthropist who works to solve some of the world's biggest problems, using technology to address poverty, climate change, global disease and educational disparities worldwide for .

just a snapshot of bills contributions to a Better future for humanity. He cofounded breakthrough energy ventures, which is three point five billion to invest in reducing Greenhouse SE gas missions. The gates foundation is tribute, more than seven point eight billion to improve the medical research access, stimulation and more.

Bill LED the effort to reduce global child mortality by fifty percent and continues to work to eradicate, ate and lesson the impact of diseases worldwide. The foundations commitment to improving education the U. S.

Abroad has been equally strong is just one example. In twenty twenty two, the foundation pledged one billion dollars to improve math education in the U. S. In the wake of the covered bendest. c.

Bill is quite literally one of the most impacted people in the world with a unique capability to steer technology that can change society for good. So that's all are talking about today, climate change, medicine, education and the latest and A I plus the way all of these issues will play off each other to impact our society. As someone with a broad view of cutting tech in these big areas, what opportunities is bill gates seeing and what's the trajectory of nason applications for A I in medicine, education and energy?

Here's our conversation .

with bill gates.

So bill, we ve know each other for some time now. We probably don't want to quite dated, but it's it's been a while. And one of the things that I love about doing podcasts with my friends is that I actually, in research, learn some things that I didn't next year.

And apparently there's this kind of try fact of three criteria. Um it's we'll have a big impact where you learn something will will be fun. What are some of the projects that immediately come to mind that are they come the most interesting that meet that try vector for you? Like what what in that goes up, that something that met all three and is fun and exciting for you?

Well, until age twenty, I got to read about lots and lots of things, you know. So I ranged quite broadly, including auditing lot of courses, harvard that I wasn't even signed up for. weirdly.

Then when I got into software, I had to suppress my sort of Normal, decide to be and be monumental. And so permit, you know, twenty to thirty five I didn't stay up to date on, you know, geology. Up by the time of thirty I started cheating reading are some other things in particular when I turned over the CEO role.

So it's nice now that partly because the foundation touches on a lot of things, I do get to range pretty widely. And there's a few topics like climate, and then you have to learn about weather and materials and energy. And so it's a great excuse for learning things nowaday.

Global health gets a lot of my attention. And so you know, I do put a lot of energy in to that because IT really fits all of those criteria. And it's such an underinvestment field, you know that you can invent tools that save millions, you can save lives for less than a thousand dollars per life.

But now you got climate, you've got AI. No shortage interesting topics in in the world today for somebody like me and in my ability to know people who can help educate me in the online tools. The combination means you you don't have to worry about getting confused because someone I I know someone who will straight me out.

So one of your projects that actually hit all three for me is your recent netflix series. I loved IT. What's next? The future with bill gates? And I will humbly say I think that has a lot of DNA in your with this podcast.

It's about the future is about what could possibly go, right? So can you just tell us a little bit about how was that experience making that show? And is there any memorable moment, maybe outtake.

that didn't make IT into the final cut? Well, years go. I did a documentary with David scogan hym inside bills brain, and he picked things I was working on that could fail, nuclear fusion, polio and magic toilets that don't need solar systems.

And that was an interesting paradigm. Why was I putting money into those when essentially no one else was? This one is quite different, because IT takes topics that like this information that I don't know the answer.

I mean, literally, that's one of the few problems I say OK Young people, we screwed this one up. You Better create around IT. You know, is that I gonna is that I going to hurt IT was fascine talking through with my kids.

Did they want to be on the series? no. And to them like that doesn't seem like a priority. And then D, B, S, like that, you know, you're so out of IT on this digital, you still try to send me email. Uh, let me straight me out on these things, which you really became a the case you know, I met people that I hadn't talk too much before. I never met lady gaga before, uh, and so that was kind of a privilege in a very interesting person.

You know, on the global health, we had so much footage, you know, that's the one that I worry, well, any will IT get the viewership that the others will get because, you know, we really do know what to do in that space. It's it's kind of amazing. And because it's far away, people I think would learn a lot because you they do not confronted with five hundred thousand military this year. And the fact we see a path to drive that that to zero.

I mean, I think the tag line come for lady gaga, stay for global health .

like got absolutely a netflix .

s might use that on its rotation. What are you currently most excited about in terms of the technologies that will make a massive difference of changing what's possible at scale?

Yeah, the current situation is that all the things are working on the relate tenability, whether it's climate or these health issues, a lot more nutrition, infectious disease are in a digital tools for, say, teaching or or health. Th Epace o f i nnovation i s f aster t han I w ould h ave e xpected. And I I have a pretty high expectation.

I go to product meets and say, how can we can do this twice as fast? Just do that many times a day, uh, and your innovation is even exceeding my best hope. So it's super promising in all of those areas. You take malnutrition, almost have the kids in africa, their brain and bodies don't develop. And we haven't understood chemically, they're getting enough calories.

You know, what is the micrometer trans? So the mix in their diet that causes them to be, on average, five and shorter than they would be, and you know twenty I Q points less capable then they should be, which for them and their countries is pretty profound. And now with the latest tools of science and looking at these bacteria and gut the microbes um and okay, how do we influence that? We clearly have a path to solve malnutrition.

And you know people should go, wow, that that is a very, very big deal in terms of the uplift that comes out of bad. You on the energy side, things like either getting fusion or fusion to provide both very cheap and constant reliability electricity, you know that's a longer timea me in the the fusion case up, but and there's a lot of companies are invested in in vie. So deep understanding of complex science things, including all these diseases this next twenty years is going to be mind doing and actually .

knowing a little bit about the malicious an go, the next level depth on the bullies, and make IT a little bit tangible so people could say, oh my god, we're there .

now yeah. Well, with my nutrition, an if you don't get the right vitamins during pregNancy or in your first several years, you can never catch up, you know. So it's a sad fact.

You don't get to go back and say, okay, eat your needs uh and you get the I Q point in the the physical capabilities. And it's weird that you're just missing small amounts of things like via and vitamin d. And so how do you solve that? Well, you could fortify a food like U.

S. breakfast. Reals are are purified, but you have to find some food that even the poorest households are the most likely to be more nursed because they're not getting eggs and and milk can meet IT.

Turns out these billion's cubes are preferably bought by low income households because IT gives them something tasty and it's very cheap relative how tasty is. So now we're going to put a lot of items, particularly vian a, into that billion cube. IT raises the Price about three percent to do that.

something I love about what you do is you identify the problem, you bring data to IT, you test IT figure out like especially because you're working the population to our low income in africa, the poorest of the poor. Like even if you're raising the Price three percent, you have to build that into everything that's happening. And so now we want to get into all of the different areas that you're focused on.

And so let's start with climate. Um I was Lucy enough to have dinner with you and read and a few others a few weeks ago. And one of the interesting things you were talking about, if you are saying how one of the interventions that we need to do is around cows, if you, like everyone, sort of knows that maybe cows contribute to climate, but you are giving me very specific interventions that can move the needle. Could you talk more about this?

yes. So there's basically two ha top of cows. Cows are about five percent of global emissions, which is pretty .

unbelievable.

And if your goals to get to zero, you you don't get to skip the cows or the steel or the cement tor you any of of those bigger as so there's a whole class of solutions of making without cows today. IT doesn't taste this good and cost too much. It's going through a little bit of a law, but those companies impossible beyond meteors and others, uh, are pursuing that.

In terms of the cows we actually have, we pursued many solutions. So what is to vaccinate the cows in a way that they're got bacteria that, amit, the mEthane, which is also called in the hat gas, decides for, which is the second most important Greenhouse gas, you can vaccinate them. And that species of bacteria isn't there.

Their stomachs are very special because they can make grass. It's at three stage fermentation process. Basically, there's another way you can change what they eat, and you could either put that in their water or their feed.

There is a drug to change the microbes om, not a vaccine, but a drug that looks very promising. And then there's a solution where you stick a sort of a metal into the skin of the cow and IT actually burns the mEthane. And all of these look to be quite cheap and implementable, even in africa. And so you know, this is one where I wasn't hopeful when I I got started a decade to go. Now it's just question which solution for which country ends up being the the best?

Yeah some of its similar amazing to like what you do with the toilet and all the rest is like doesn't look like it's possible. Now IT is and IT makes a huge difference. One of the other fund things, when we were talking about the discovery of the work around cows over the dinner Taylors, once you focus on IT, is not just the systemic climate change, but it's also the questions about life. Example, what this can do for quality of life in africa, right? So say a little bit more about like milk production and cow brides and other thing because it's like I never thought bill as the cow extra.

but here you are. I didn't go knowing much about cows. So protein is a very import part of a good diet, and foods with proteins tend to be very expensive. So you can make chickens and cows live longer and be more productive, then that's super beneficial.

So the west has taken his cows these whole teens and driving them so they make thirty leaders of milk a day, whether the Normal cows, uh, make less than three leaders a day. See, have this factor of ten. Productivity through the genetics of that cow.

Now you can't just fly a whole steam down to africa because the heat and the diseases, it's not adapted. But if you do the cross ring properly, only giving up a little bit of the productivity set down to twenty leaders, still a factor of six Better, you can improve those cows. You also take the ID of grazing, where the cows are going out into areas that are now being forced off.

And you can change IT to the cows, largely stationary, and the food, which they call folder brought to the counts. So you avoid these incredible conflicts between the grasses and the other farmers. And so it's one of the most exciting foundation things.

And once you we do the R N D and get those good thousand, it's private market sustainable. We're further along with chickens you know was in IT will be a few weeks go seen that we've cut the Price of chickens and half women are who do this, you know they make extra money. They give some of the extra gigs to their kids as well as as selling them. So it's taking but its leverage stopped at the west you that spent the last hundred years doing selective breeding of both a chickens and cows.

So obviously, when we're think metrics and cause it's climate change, it's malnutrition, it's potentially war and conflict. If we zoom out on climate change, what is the sort of statistic that for you sort of represents the gravity of the situation? Or what are you working towards a decrease when you think about, you know, climate general.

well, the the size of the emissions and which is over fifty billion tons, see you two equivalent per year ah and the pie chart of okay, you know one of the big five areas like transport is one of the big five, but then you cars play and boats, trains underneath that electricity, which is called natural gas industry building and take agriculture. I want everybody to have that pie chart in their head.

And you know the theory of change, which is that we need to make all those things without them costing more. You know, I would say there's two numbers, fifty billion and zero. Zero is what we want emissions to be, and zeroes what we want.

The extra cost of Greens, cement, Green beef, Green rice, uh, you know, Green car, uh, we want to even at the low end where you park on the street, because even if the world should pay a lot for Green things, they won't because it's a global problem. The real problem is for future generations, the negative impacts have been somewhat overstated for the current generation actually, but the because that accumulates and gets worse over time. If IT causes us to help those future generations that you know ah it's not not A A terrible thing. The damage is mostly import countries. It's almost like people didn't realize whether there's always been a problem and that like all every bad weather thing, that's climate no, there was bad weather before and it's you slightly getting worse, but it's near the equity where your absolute temperatures to feed outdoor work and the current crops that we have, that's where your getting into conditions that humans have never striped in.

Well on the electricity side and we'll get to nuclear in a minute because you and I share I passion and that being a great source. And there's all kinds of things. One, the need of electricity.

Second, you have good, scalable, clean, cost effective power. You can solve all kinds of ills. What are the other energy sources of renewables and Green energy that are capturing your attention outside of nuclear?

Well, of course, we want to keep driving solar to be cheaper. That's gone way Better than was expected. Um and there's some new things you seem props guys settle, drive the efficiency up of that.

You know we want to drive win cost down, including offshore wind, which is still quite a bit of premium. We want to improve energy storage, but it's not realistic to think will completely solve that problem, which is why why you you need nuclear in in the mix, uh, as well. Geothermal actually looks like he might play a role in the western half.

The united states actually has pretty good hot rocks. And then there's the eternal companies that wanted to really deep polls, uh, that's more really stage but fervent and another company are showing that they can actually get recently good pricing. Another scaling up.

You know google just did a purchase agreement at at a premium to help them scale up, which is using all the tech companies are very, very oriented towards not raising their emissions, which will take advantage of that to get these products on to learning curve. Eventually, we want to have a zero Green premium, but somebody has to help get us, you know which solar was very subsidized and then under certain definitions is now gotten to A A zero Green premium. There's a few things like title that probably is pretty limited in solar panels and space.

Maybe you know some people even talked about, okay, put the whole data center up there, just bits uh actually moving bits from space to ground diseases than moving energy from space to ground. So particular because launched cost or down, you cannot dly stream up of those things that kind of um a far out thing. But uh, you know should be in the portfolio of innovation.

One of the things that I think that it's useful to highlight for most people as they like example, a current discussion of the eyes is always going to be all its electricity. But the investment that all the hyper scale companies are putting into the kind of how we make clean dinner centers, how we have clean power on the rest, is like that subsidy for the R N. D. And these advanced persist agreements are exactly the kind of thing where you kind of like different ways of conceptualizing public, private, good.

yeah. I mean, I say that rich countries, rich companies and which individuals should boot strap the market for these Green products, know we should buy clean aviation fuels.

Some nations may Mandate that for private aviation, which that would definitely be a good thing because that would get the volume to go up so that eventually we can get something with a, uh, either a there a very low Green premium into commercial aviation, which is another six percent of the emissions we have to get all the way to zero. So yeah, it's important to remember red, that all that dated another demand. It's big numbers and it's coming quickly over the next six or seven years, but it's not as much as electric ars or electric key pumps. So we've our climate solution because you can't avoid using the energy somehow the only non hydrocarbon way we really know how to make energy is an important farmers electricity. So we get rid of coin natal gas, but you have to make a lot more electricity to replace the the either heating or industrial uh capacity that those track type c carbons provided.

And can you tell us a little more about solar? You are telling me actually about the amazing increasing ability of solar panels and like what percentage of the sun may capture for energy, which was fascinating. But you also said that you don't think, you know, batteries are not gonna be here in time or is that we just need more time to get to batteries where they are? The cost is too high. And I feel like not having the atterly we need is what is inhibiting solar from being the energy source that can save us all.

Most places we should be adding solar as fast as we can, and we're actually limited by the grid capacity. So I love solar. You know the efficiency started out at like ten percent.

It's in the twenties now IT could get as highest forty with new approaches over the particularly profit over the next decade or so. But it's not just a twenty four hour storage problem looking in. My batteries are now sodium and others will solve your twenty four hour problem.

But you have periods of time like the midwest gets a cold front where you get ten or twelve days all the batteries ever made in history for every car, every computer wouldn't store a day of electricity. And if you're only you seen a battery once a year, that is, you charged IT. And at sitting there for this unusual thing, that's super expensive electricity, instead of getting the capital by about three hundred sixty five times, see here you get IT at one.

So very a seasonal and bad weather things, uh, where you you don't want to to shut off power particularly it's been used to heat homes. It's way more complicated than people think. Electricity doesn't move long distances today.

It's mostly coal or np togas plants that are fairly near to the usage. And yes, there's innovation and transmission actually fairly exciting stuff, but we're going to have to have a mix. You know, in particular, if you look at a country like japan, where there's essentially almost no solar potential there, and even the wind has periods where you have too much, too little, the U.

S. Happens to be very blessed. We have incredible wind and, uh, solar resources and these open source models that are now, we're Molly now.

Okay, what does that energy system look like? Are part of seen okay, wing, can we get there? And there's a lot of these goals that um are not well thought through. This can be harder than I wish IT would be.

But one of things that you already mentioned, just said before is up hard of the reason why we need nuclear vision and fusion is because of the fact always awesome renewable solar when uh hydrox that um well hydrox can do a little bit more twenty four. But yes, but they have they have limitations when they generate and when they don't. And so and then battery storage, the chAllenge. And so you and I have invest in some fusion things together, say a little bit about what's the hope and the and the possibilities is refusing fusion .

is where you take the big atoms like uranium, and as they split, you get energy. And fusion is where you take the small atoms, primarily hydrogen, as you put them together, release energy. The middle of the period table is a the most stable.

And so you're getting relativist energy, uh uh through the that mass decrease fusion is very difficult. Uh IT involves in our temperatures that are like the center of the sun in a millions of degrees. And so that's plasma physics, which we know a lot more about.

And we're using A I tools to study those things. And now there's a variety of techniques tok OK uh which uh coma fusion system choosing being the one with the most credible schedule for say ten years from now. Most the others are probably more like fifteen years away.

But at some point fusion energy will be extremely cheap and it's not IT doesn't have the same waste problems that vision does. I think those are are solvable problems. And I invested in that because that's more like a six year timetable.

Me if everything went perfectly. So we society's a whole. Even though a lot more money is coming into IT, we're still under investing infusion, infusion given that the value of chep electricity specifically is so fundamental to society.

I mean, if you know somebody says you are we have a water shortage, no, there is a lot of water. IT just takes energy to move that water and desAlinated. So if energy is cheap, you have infinite, wonderful water everywhere in the world.

But the energies is to expensive right now to do that at scale, even recycling things. You know, why can't we? Adams, don't leave the planet tiny bit of python, but it's all there. And the reason we don't is that the energetic costs of restoring things to their original state is too high.

Well one of the um for our listener is a terror power super awesome way of kind of actually using nuclear fission waste as fuel. And so getting a compounding effect. One of the things that you guys have been working on for number of years.

maybe yeah two thousand six as well, the vision company terror power gets started exactly now.

One of the things that always bemused me about some of the current public dialogue around the eyes, I H was this kind, accelerate climate change because of the electricity cost. And I think what you, most of these people are not realizing how we can also use A I to help us with climate. So because that is likely if we can get a lot more intelligence apply to various problems that can help us with client, say a little bit about how you're thinking in that arena.

Know the extra electa load is you is there, but it's it's like a ten percent at on in little chAllenge the way that we do Green accounting a little bit. And I wish fish an infusion were sooner because this sort of gold rush for AI backend capacity is kind of the next day years. And even vision will only be able to make a modest contribution in the twenty thirty timea me to that, uh, electricity supply.

So the value by ye in solve in the scientific problems of, okay, how do you grow? How do you make plants more productive? Okay, you model photos, synthesis, and you model how you change the plant genetics in order to double the productivity.

That's a very profound advance and improving photos tic efficiency, in fact, because it's kind of a far out thing, the foundation is the primary funder of as as we show that IT IT can work. Okay, other other people will come into that. And anyway, A I for material science, biology, IT is A A gigantic accelerator. So take whatever Green product you thinks can be the hardest to get the zero Green premium, rethink how hard that's going to be because the A I tools are so phenomenal at accelerating all of these past of innovation.

yeah. And actually one of the things i've been taking about is like while it's a big electricity cost for training these scale learning machines, once you have that intelligence like like that's how we've made everything, it's through intelligence. Once you have that intelligence to amplify across the board like applying that, the climate change has got to be a like there's got to be some multiply effect of we get this much actually savings and carbon and other kinds of things through the application of electricity. I don't know what the multiplier will end up being.

but i'm certains there now. It's absolutely there. There are some goals like not going about one point five degrees that even with a high being a net positive contributor because of the difficulty of scaling in all the areas in all the countries. Uh, you know some of those goals we will miss, but the we will avoid the level of heating that would be disastrous and we will need to do some adaptation to clean in poor countries.

So I want to switch gears. Another area where I think you probably best known is global health. And I think it's an area where A I can do so much and my husband is a policy t data scientists. So he's particularly excited about this area of the interview.

You have focused on the era diction of disease and I think, but fact checking in one thousand nine hundred and eighty of W H O declare that small pox was eradicated and that's the first and only disease that we have eradicated. You've said let's tackle polio, let's tackle malaria. How do you pick? What is the next disease you're onna tackle like wouldn't amazing ambition and then how .

do you go after IT? Yeah so most diseases we're going for a burden reduction. Only very few diseases should you try to go for a addiction because it's very, very hard to get to zero.

And right now with polio in in afghanistan, we're in gaza. We're in somalia, we're in drc, and you we're having to execute high coverage vaccination campaigns against misinformation, violence in tourist places in the world. So it's very, very hard.

Polio s close. There's one called ginny warm, which is combined to africa, where a present Carter just got to one hundred. He'd been a champion of that.

So we're hoping he'll alive, not only to boat the election, but also to come to the ginny warm celebration parties. He was gna take a couple years, so he's going to have to hang on a little longer. So the magic thing that happened at the turn of the century was people got seriously global health about really measuring.

Okay, kids dive diary a, but what cause that diary? They dive nona malaria. Kids, more clear what that is. But let's even though there's no market, the people who dimension happening in the kids here, it's sound like you can make a business case of, hey, go to silicon lea and do a malaria start up and look at that spread sheet.

The line that says life save will look at, but the line that says profit will have a lot of red numbers because you they can't afford these tools. Some medical sciences very distorted towards rich world conditions and even among ritual conditions towards cancer and a few other things. So the incentive system is in a potential could be improved.

But gates foundation, that's our place we come to fill in, is that the things that aren't market driven, like getting the real vaccines cheap enough for all the kids of the world, not just the rich kids who don't die direct, but the the that also used to be a happy million, now down two hundred thousand. So as we went from ten million under five deaths per year in the at the turn of the century to fight million, the rea was one of our best pomona. We got a vaccine out for that, which was a very expensive vaccine that we work with all the vaccine companies, western and asian, to get those Prices down.

And so where we're basically driven by the in equity where we say, why do mothers die in childbirth twenty times as much in africa? Why do kids die fifty times as much in the first five years in import countries, particularly africa, but also southeast asia? And so were taking all of those and say, okay, let's find the best scientists.

Let's understand the field conditions. You is, this stuff to deliver will IT be accepted. You know, we have crazy ways of killing mosquitoes. That that loan doesn't get rid of malaria.

But if you treat a lot of humans and the reinfection rate has been massively reduced, then you can get to the point the U. S. Got to because we had malaria where you've cleared during the low season.

That's the, uh, winter here in the drive is there you've actually cleared the party sight. So there's humans, so there's no reinfection taking place. And you know in the next hopefully well, less than than twenty years, we have five years now we need to do the tools. So our goal is to finish poll A O during the five years and then with new tools, get the credibility to get the world to fund A A malaria diction starting in twenty thirty total.

awesome.

What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology? And what do they?

Ronna l, cou, b, an A I, scientist, entrepreneur, stor, and now host of the new podcast, pioneers of A. I think of that as your guide for all things. A I is the most human issues at the center. Join me every wednesday for pioneers of A I, and don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune IT.

One of the other projects we work on together is A I and drug discovery. And so this one of ones I think we may actually even begin to see, you know some of the earliest you know kind of global benefit from. So where in what areas of I drug discovery or you can most focused on and think can make a kind of a global health difference?

Yeah so understanding protein and molecular shape space is a perfect AI problem because we have database, the protein databases that you know we have uh hundred and fifty thousand molecules. We know the shapes and so we've trained the eyes on those their ability to predict the shapes. And there for the drug able sites in these proteins, uh you know that is accelerating medical discovery.

There was actually a company called torino that was doing IT P. A. I. But now there might be twenty times as many people, uh, and a progressive much faster because AI is is very, very well suited to this. And eventually I won't just move the low level, what the shape is, but the model, the cell and the organ and the organism.

And so even complex disease dynamics, you it's beyond human understanding to map out all the different things that go on the AI models as you gather the data, which will be the limitation factor, will help you understand overnutrition about nutrition way Better than we do today. So you most things put aside neology ical in the next ten to twenty years, I would say the likelihood of dramatic uh, medical advances, even in the ological one thing alzheimer, uh, i'd say those would be sold. I love talking to these companies about, okay, which part of the problem they are solving.

I mean, one of the things that strikes me as I feel like it's super fashionable today to be, oh, the world is terrible. The world is dumb ster fire. It's getting worse.

The past thirty years have been horrible. The next twenty are horrible. And yet talking to you, i'm like, no stop.

If we actually look at the data, things have been getting Better, especially in global health over the last thirty years. And often because of A I, the futures is bright. They're so much that can happen. And you've just sort of touched on not just sort of technological progress, but also some of the sort of bureaucratic, some of the some of the other things that perhaps A I or else can unlock. Are there things that A I can unlock that are just boring administrative or helping health care workers that aren't sort about cutting edge technology, but are other ways that A I can help in the public health field?

You, on the same way that the microcomputer revolution allowed me a Young age to think, okay, computing will be free. Therefore, what would an individual do with free computing? Uh, and you know, pollan, I kind of saw that and said, OK software, the only thing that will hold that back was older people kind of that woo computers are expensive.

And so the idea, oh, it'll be doing spread utes or prostate. They be like you, kid, that's just too expensive here. It's even more mind blowing that you could say White collar worker capability.

And eventually, although robotics is still very specialized, eventually horizontal blue court color productivity will be very inexpensive. So, you know, I take an MRI diagnosis that a friend has, and you ChatGPT such a good job of explaining IT. Uh, you on showing, you know, where got that material and the creativity, the fluency, is kind of mind blind.

And so all of us should have this crush. Yes, if you just want to know what for lizer is what a pity was good. But if you want to know what a trip with a sixteen year old for four days with a budget of four thousand dollars to italy in August, looks like nobody wrote that thing.

But the the A, I, A, if it's connected, a properly IT, is mine blowingly good at those things. So they're already all in our life of uh in writing poems or uh speeches, uh, understanding or having complex material summarized. You know we're already getting A A huge benefit. And you know that you know a lot of White collar work, uh you know should already be either more productive or in a drive towards to tire quality.

So actually one of the things this conversation reminded of that I haven't actually ever asked you is um so you know there is a decade or so of a lot of focus on personalized medicine where we are currently on that. Is that improving? Is that is is the promise of that turning out at all?

I always and put off by people's fascination with equals. One medicine happening。 Kids die of malaria. You know millions of people are diagnosed here with alzheimer's. So i'm just the in personalized medicine guy.

And like you know, the world does not have the resources to do any equals one solutions. If some super rich person funds that, maybe IT helps the scientific discovery path. But you know, I couldn't bring myself to be involved with that because it's so unjust to take finite resources eventually.

Yes, understanding everyone's genetics sand saying, okay, your drug dose is different because of this uh and so i'm kind of taking a provocative position on this. The the science that goes under that name is very good science. The people who work on matter very well intended.

It's just know we have rare diseases. We have created such an incentive for them versus widespread conditions were not really allocating that effectively particularly. I mean, the insane stuff is the the diseases of the the poor countries.

So can you actually say more about you've troubled recently, africa is all over about the conditions with health care workers on the ground. What have you seen there? And how can we help improve them?

Well, people should understand that most people in sub sera and africa never need a doctor, not when they are born, not when they're sick, not when they die. And so this is not a doctor thing. So your image of health care, health care for most people in those countries, is primary health care.

A modestly train person who can give you semantic otis pet vaccines, very, very importantly, to give up pregnant women, their prenatal checks now will get an ultra sound evaluation. We will see OK, which ten percent of pregnant es might be complicated, and then the women does need to get to somewhere, whether is train personnel who could do A C section. So we can see with this, A I trained ultrasound is IT going to be a complicated pregNancy, and the predictions are standing ly accurate, and go to that all that trouble, which you couldn't afford to do for all pregnancies.

And so the greatest shortage of doctors in the world is there. And so the idea that in native language, through your smart phone, which not everybody has, the times on our side, even in the the poor countries on this, you will get health advice. And a lot of the diagnostic tools will be available at A A point of care where individuals can take a lot of people experience this with lateral flow cobb tests.

Now we're trying to convert those to be pointed care, but molecular tests and still super cheap, but also more more sensitive, more uh accurate. And so health care is you is in a we only have one hundred dollars per person per year verses in the U. S.

Where we spent fifteen thousand per person period. So it's it's a hundred and fifty times different. And you know in fact, there is trios involved in, okay, which things should you treat now? Even things like blood pressure, coaster obesity. My hope is that not only of the cost of those treatments going down, were also going to put them into forms where it's like yearly dose en. And so the cost in the delivery system of getting G L P one to all applicants, you know ten, fifteen years from now, you we'll be able .

to do that. So in addition to the elevation of humanity through all forms of kind of global medicine and what is actually impact health care and education is another area that you and the and the foundation work on intensely and you know obviously people have encounter day eye lot with this. It's kind of like what what does that mean um what are some of the the kind of maybe more surprising or other kinds of use of A I education, whether it's kind of a globally available tutors or rather can think what are some of the A I for education for the world that kind of captured some of your attention?

I think the person to admit is that tech lovers like myself have talked about the benefit of technology be using in education for our whole career. And the actual benefit for the average student has been very, very post. If you are motivated student whose can get on the academy two hours night or watch you two videos about photo synthesis, wow.

You know, people like ourselves, we are able to learn in a way that's unprecedented. You know, there's a company called the great courses where I am on the treatment. I love watching those things.

Just so much great stuff out there. But the current math achievement of a high school graduate, U. S, is not Better than one hundred years ago. It's not like medicine where there are new tools and new understanding. If you I said all in one thousand nine hundred, the best mouth teacher was, then you couldn't contradict me because IT may be true.

And so we've done a lot, and i'm a believer, but AI, because of the fluency and personalization, I think we we can have very high aspirations of how we mix social experiences in the classroom, experiences with the teacher and working on your own, that correcting your pronunciation as you read things immediately, telling, you know, you can get this mat problem right, you not turning in homework, so two days later, after the poor teachers mental all this time, you're like, what was that a manipulation air? Or was that a conceptual understanding there? The AI economy egos on the cutting edge of this but there's others like C, K, while many that it'll say, yes, you do those two ministers you didn't cancel.

Those are properly as supposed to. You set the problem up wrong because these two trains you didn't get the when they pass each other older break equation properly. And so the idea that you will learn how a tutor keep students motivated, you know, using the domain like sports or health, are construction that the student can relate to.

The the promise of having fantastic personal tutors in the inner city, who asked in poor countries is super exciting. And you talk about an area that's underfunded. A global education is. And the magic formula for country's uplifting themselves is to have good health and good education. And then their economy grows, their tax collections grows in their their very self sufficient.

And that, you know why we want to help countries get out of the poverty trap, not because it's an in the skilled thing, but if we help them get there, not only morally but economically, stability in a many good things flow from those. Those countries being well off. Global education is a very.

Under developed field. But particularly now what they I you know i'm encourage gene philanthropist to get in and showing that that there are things like structured pedagogy, uh, where the teachers given A A very clear way of teaching that we are seen some some very good results. No, I really appreciate.

I think some people are like, oh, the boy who cried wolf. It's like you told me twenty years ago that books we're going to do IT or that whatever. And so you know, people are skep portals like we are.

We finally there can you tell us more about the first avenue elementary school in york? And obviously, your super concern about equity. Is this something that .

is replicable that could scale? So I love on academy, but that was mostly used by motivated students. And so for I think like eight years, they've been saying, okay, how do we get into the classroom? How do we work with the teachers? Explain the staff, you know, yes, the computers, the internet stuff is getting more pervasive.

The pandemic actually helped a bit with that. So saw and I were amongst the first two people who open. I was nice enough to let us mess around with early ChatGPT four.

And a lot of the cool things, like having A A right songs and poems actually saw taught me that stuff. I was like, I won't known to ask. You can write like shakespeare wow ah and so he you put a lot of on resources in.

He gets support from the gates foundation. Many others created this economy. Go any last school year he added uh in a small number of schools, but including this numeracy net neutrality y school.

And so I went there to meet the teachers, to meet the students, and see, you know, see me to kid who clearly is ahead of his class, and sort of the factory based model of you thirty kids in a classroom. You definitely have a problem where you need to do remediation, catch kids up. But IT also, you're also painted by that kid was ahead, you know, and maybe checking out or being disruptive and yet, you know, you think, wow, we wanted drive that.

So the personal to the aspect allows that student to sometimes be off on his own, sometimes helping the other students. And this, you know, con dashboard, along with economy go, which is seen, you know, so when you walk in in your teacher in the morning, instead of people handing in homework new up deal, that you just go to your desk and say, okay, who connected in last night, what how many hints do they need? How far did they get in the progression and you know, you you're giving feedback.

You know you can have the parents connect IT up to that. Even the thing where a paper gets turned in, you don't turn in the paper, you turn in the AI session so you can just save the AI. Okay, how much did the student do?

What's your suggestion on, uh, how we get them to either help with the first draft or help with the the grammar, the the logic? So it's great to see IT been there and seen IT in person reminded me of embedding IT in and always with teachers. Whenever you have some new thing there, maybe ten percent of the teachers that latch on to IT and you get these great results.

And then when you tell the other ninety percent you must use this. Those results almost all is just disappear ah and so okay, how do we make this one one that that scales so that humility of how far we haven't comment even what they are, we will have do that. But I what I saw made me even more optimistic.

So one of things that people sometimes miss about the approach that you in the foundation, bring these problems, you not just quantification of, like, okay, cost for lives, say such a, but also the systems thinking. And so what are some of the kind of non tech related levels for a change in education? Like what are some policy things that either we as as americans or you know the world should be thinking about to improve education and .

is a lot of very good data about not having cellphones in the school. And you know some great we're going on there. There's very good data. Boys should probably start later than they do school. School day should start later.

There's all the learning out of the charter school movement, which it's hard stop because IT shows that long school day, long school year are incredibly beneficial. Engaging the parents in a you know, here's where your kids, having chAllenged and communicating with them, allow these digital tools are going to make that far easier for the parents who want to engage in that. We're seen now in communities where there are charters.

The even though most the kids are in the public schools, of public schools essentially compete. They either adopt those practices, are find their own ways. So know there are places like norlands or dcr ostia school performance up. And so we want to make sure that even as we try to put a iron to this, some of those learns are incorporated.

I mean, a man as a mother of three boys, and my, how are they? Onna compete with the girls? What is happening? So to switch gears, education, I think i'm going to steal one of your own questions, which is, if you have the opportunity to meet with someone from the year twenty one hundred, what would your questions be for them?

Wow, how did you deal with the the AI chAllenge opportunity? You know, did you said earlier that I have this view that life is improving, which is objectives vely true. There's always footnotes like nuclear weapon, bioterrorism. Now A I needs to be added to that list.

But you know, the past fifty years life in general, if you're a woman, if you're gay, I mean, it's kind of sadden away that because we're so problem oriented, we're not very reflective about, hey, five million kids a year aren't dying. You like you meet with climate people in the show on climate going to in the world. Do you think you're going to go back to ten million in? You're dying.

No way you're not going to go back. We IT is a super big headwind because of the impact of agricultural so, you know, I bring my hate. The world is pretty good, but that twenty one hundred person, I hope to hear how they avoided.

I'll call IT the poor footnotes, ai, nuclear weapons, biotech weapons and polarization. You know, people being able to get long and CoOperate, including in how governance adapts, you know, which A I will force governments to come up with different wave, taxing people, regulating things. And it's a little scary that has happened at the time when the the road trust in government is is at A A very low point, both relatively and absolutely.

What are some of things you think people should anticipate coming with A I in the next three to five years?

Well, it's so mind blowing, you know, sometimes hard to get your head around that no one expected the White color thing to come before the blue ler thing, you know. So in like life, three pino, they have these hills where the computers are doing the easy things. And in a warehouse work, which we can't yet do, was down there in the lowland and helping diagnose was way up the hell writing legal briefs, our code uh and so it's were surprised at that order. But you know the so called blue color or songs robot that can be told you go to this construction site and help go to this restaurant, go to this hotel and clean the rooms, even if the Price is such that in the home that only drops by for an hour, uh, doesn't live there at at first. You know that those things are, I believe, within, within easily within the next decade.

Well, i'm actually going back to your original vision of a PC on every desk with the software that would help people do the work and lives and of where what do you think is going to come now? I think a lot of people haven't realized part of what's happening with current AI is essentially the largest programing language will be natural language, E. G, english. And everyone will have a coding, a system, not just the PC, but a coding assistance. What do you think going going back to those kind of early is that what do you how do you think that will transform the world?

Well, the ability to navigate data, you know, which a long time ago you have have some IT guy, right? A thing. And okay, what's the header and footer? And, you know, report there is a thing called the RPG report generation engine and cobol.

You have this section in the picture. Anyway, a lot of that stuff is so of obsolete IT just makes you laugh. The idea you can sit down and engage in a dialogue about da in a very rich way means that, you know, our ability to run businesses Better, you understand pollex adapt to changing things will be so incredible.

And IT won't require customs software. And in fact, the whole completion of the software market, how many applications will there be at first? What we have is everybody adding eye.

Every applications say, no, keep paying x because now I got to the eye. But in fact, the number of applications you need, think of a college which has a schedule nap, finance APP support the the student APP. You know, that should all be one thing that every encounter with the student to the colleges all, uh, maintained in a rich way.

So the software, tough applications will be very different time in a train. Figure out, okay, how quickly does that happen. It's incredibly beneficial that this this software more adapting to you, including creating user inner faces dynamically than you going, okay, I use this software package for this.

And then I go to this website into this. You're a low level clerk, even looking at your email. The email is so stupid that you have to figure out IT only can time sort the order IT doesn't know what's important and then you have your messages and you have to go back home for us.

And you're the one who puts that little folders and things. I mean, the I thought the semantic level of interaction with the computer would be higher by now, even without A I, but now with a ye I. That is the very high level task.

And i'm doing you are working on my budget. I'm considering banning home that I will be working with you, not at the spread sheet cell l level, but at the o IT. Let's break this task down in a high level form.

Here's what I can automatically going and do for you. It's you super revolutionary. You know, we're all have an agent that is a utility arian help you get things done. You reads everything you read, but the things you meant to read IT reads a and then you know you you, your agent can figure out, okay, which parts of that are important enough to to take your time to understand?

We are now switching to rapid fire. I'll let read us the .

first question is your movie, song or book that fills you with optimism for the future?

Well, the Better Angels of our nature, Stephen pinker, sort of documents how violent death in lifespan education have gone. And you know, there are some lessons of why we've done well, doesn't guarantee, and he doesn't say that that's the future. But you know, if you have one book which should get you back into the mindset, okay, how far we come, what we feel good about, I, i'd recommend that one.

fabulous. And h, what is a question that you wish people ask you more often?

How does my nutrition work? Uh, yeah. And I A lot of things I think about are boring and we should solve without. Most people haven't ever figure out toilets and nuclear reactors. And, you know, understanding disease, i'm surprised people aren't more curious. You know, when I first said, what do kids die of? I had a hard trying finding out, and I would thought, well, isn't shouted, we all be asking that crime of thing at more important than GDP.

exactly. I love that. Um so where do you see progress or momentum outside of your industry? Of course, that's very broad inspires you.

Well, when india, some example of a country where all are plenty things that are difficult there, the health nutrition education is improving and they're stable enough and generating their own government revenue enough, that it's very likely that twenty years from now, people will be dramatically Better off. And it's kind of a laboratory to try things that then when you prove them out in india, you can take to other places.

And so our biggest non U. S. Office for the foundation is in is in india. And the most number of pilot rolled out things we're doing anywhere in the world with partners in india. If you go there and you've never been, you might think, well, this is a chaotic place and you you're not used to so many levels of income all being on the street at at the same time, but you will get a sense of .

the viBrant y right. Last question, can you leave us with a final thought about what is possible to achieve if everything breaks our way in the next fifteen years? And and what's the first step to get there?

The potential positive path is so good that I will forces to rethink. How should we use our time? You can almost call IT a new religion or a new philosophy of, okay, how do we stay connected with each other, not addicted to these things. It'll make video games look like, uh, nothing in terms of the attractive has uh, spending time on them. So it's fascine that we will the issues of you know disease and enough food of climate and things go well, those will largely become solve problems.

And so the next generation does get to say, okay, given that some things that were massively and shortage are now not how how do we take advantage that, you know, do we ban I be used in certain endeavors so that humans get um so you know you like you don't want robots playing baseball. Probably a because they are w too good. Keep them on the field. Okay, how broadly would you go with that if we are so used to this shortage world that I I hope I get to see how we start to rethink the these deep meaning questions.

build a total force.

Thank you, and great talking to.

Possible is produce by wonder media network is hosted by R A finger and me read offen our showers is possible is produced by key and ards E, D, alert, serious lead a dream bae hand paloma reno, jane cabin is our executive .

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