Gadgetory

sup guys I'm Kim PhD here alright so as far as tech people becoming billionaires and then turning into philanthropists for the greater good Bill Gates pretty much the gold standard as far as that goes he's on pace to give away something like ninety nine point nine six percent of his wealth to charities and foundations so for those wondering what he's doing with host billions and billions of dollars every year he and Melinda dropped this annual letter where they explain sort of their view of the world at that time and what they're doing about it so I'll leave the link to this year's new 2019 annual letter below but I got to actually go up and chat with him in Seattle about this year I was looking at it and this is that chat all right mr. gates thank you for sitting down with me for a couple minutes I'll try to learn as much from you as possible in our time super I think a lot of my audience will know you from your work at Microsoft a lot of tech heads watching these videos but you've also forged this entire I could call it a second career as a philanthropist that I think is equally as interesting and impressive I'll try to tie those things together first of all the annual letter can you summarize the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation annual letter and like a sentence or two well Melinda and I get a chance to go all over the world particularly in Africa where a lot of our health work is we go into a lot of classrooms where our education work is and so every year we try to think okay what would other people be interested in in terms of new innovations things that are going well going poorly this year we framed it as surprises right you know so I was studying the population growth in different countries and the age pyramid in different countries and so you know I'm finally seeing some good technology used in the classroom to try and let the teacher focus in on really talking the students are not just grading the homework so that was another one and it is actually quite a diverse set of things that made our surprise list so one of the things I read that I found really interesting in it was you sort of broke down the biggest contributors to greenhouse emissions so manufacturing agriculture transportation the transportation one hit me because I'm really into electric cars that's one of the specific areas of tech focus on the channel so I'm curious what's your take on electric cars have you gone electric how do you feel about well the you know Tesla is an amazing product that is catching on but it's still a pretty small percentage of the market it's a premium price Fiat going they lost their $7,500 tax credit so it's making it tougher now ton of the other manufacturers are gonna come in partly because the car California zero emission and partly because people see these trends there'll be a lot of really great electric cars to choose from now will it get down to the volume price categories and then you know for transportation it's not just automobiles we've got trucks we've got you know trains boats planes and so you know solving the entire transport sector isn't gonna be easy you know transport is hard industrials hard it's a wide range of innovations we're gonna need and also I read that especially in the US truck driver is an extremely popular job in fact more than half the US truck driving is like the most popular profession in that state so it sounds like electric might not be the only solution to transportation well the passenger car the power output you need is lower them for a truck so eventually batteries might work for a truck but it's a far more difficult problem because just the weight is a is a lot higher there even those passenger cars one thing to be careful of is unless the electric sector has gotten to zero the electric car is still an emitter because of the indirect emissions from the electricity it uses right and so only in the place where you both get the electric cars to be a hyper centage and you get the electric sources to be zero emission then you've got that passenger transport car piece near getting near to zero that's the goal the AIA conversation seems like a big it's kind of hard to ignore it in 2019 and I've had conversations other people who are more a negative about it more pessimistic about just AI and the the possible downside I'm curious if you're more optimistic about the upside of AI or uses for it or ways to possibly make an impact and and what you're trying to do well the AI is allowing us to make advances in fields that are are really important like understanding the biology of the human body it's super complicated and so if you look at all the data you gather because the sensors are getting better you know trying to understand okay how do we help people with obesity how do we take cancer where is the point wanna interfere even the one that's really difficult is the brain is so complicated that we don't have drugs for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and so we want it not just people live longer but them to live really quality years and not have the medical cost be expanding that's an area AI people feel like yeah I'm not I'm not against that so see it definitely has a lot of upside as far as helping to to research certain things helping to find patterns that a human necessarily wouldn't have picked up things like that so in medical fields it's useful so I agree with you on that I'm really happy about that if you could give a couple short bits of good news some good progress you've observed that some people might not know about to sort of counteract the bad news everyone seems to hear about what would you say yeah the we used to have 10% of all children born would die before they reached five years old that number is now 5% and with the right and innovations we can get it by 2030 to two and a half percent so we've gone from 12 million were dying to now 6 million and so it's every year six million live saved all these things are tricky because you don't want to say to people that we we shouldn't be mad about the remaining problem so say to people hey feel good about the progress and still you know be mad that that six million are still buying that's an interesting dichotomy it's a it's a good perspective to have because you have to you have to be proud of the progress that's been made but you still have to look forward at all the work yet to be done and that's kind of I guess what I'm wondering is my next question is you've put billions of dollars in over a decade into the Foundation's work on these issues does it make you optimistic about the future that that so much progress has been done or do you look at the challenges ahead and that's like an overwhelming sort of massive amount of work in a broad way the work has gone so well on global health better than we expected yeah and the innovation and science that will give us new tools like an HIV vaccine and a malaria vaccine you know so in my lifetime I hope the whole issue of these diseases that are caught in poor countries mostly infectious diseases we essentially solve those problems and we're close on on polio eradication when I look at politics I have to admit they you know there's some trends in terms of how what trust people have or how they're polarized I do worry about that that's not you know a deep area I I don't bring unlike the biology where I get to study it and see it you know I'm on the same footing as everybody and seeing these political trends but yes there are things that I I do worry about but overall the human condition our ability to feed prevent disease help people live an enjoyable life we are making great progress on those things so as long as we stay committed to them you know that it makes me love the work and and remain optimistic all right well I hope obviously your work goes as far towards those successes as possible and I guess my last question would be knowing that you're doing all this work but so in my position on a philanthropist I don't necessarily have the means how does someone like me or someone watching this help in the best way they can well I wish more people could actually get to these countries you know join the Peace Corps spend time even just spending a few weeks there and see how great the needs are and see the progress a lot of you know volunteer work and the United States builds that sense of okay we care about other humans even you know beyond our own family group even people have very different experiences so you know at a young age a little bit of giving money away you know to form that habit and picking which things you really want to give to including lots of things here in the US and getting involved with volunteer time those are the people who I think will help kind of bring the world together and you know avoid just this divisive mess that is my greatest concern I couldn't end a Bill Gates interview without asking can you still jump over a chair that's a good question probably not and it would if it was a very small chair I'll count that as a victory that's a victory you know I used to be able even jump over a garbage can but I'm afraid I do I play tennis so I'm in reasonable shape but not my jumping skills that's all good I appreciate it thanks again for the thanks for coming out yeah I appreciate it great to me too if we get to do it again