Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Talking Tech & Saving the World with Bill Gates!”.
Come on yeah, what’s up guys, I’m kbhd here all right! 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 99.96 of his wealth to Charities and Foundations, so for those wondering what he’s doing with those 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. How he’s looking at it – and this is that chat, [ Applause ] 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 um, 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. So 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 in like a sentence or two uh 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 uh.
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 uh really talking to students and not Just grading the homework, so that was another one and it is actually uh quite a diverse set of things that we’ve 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 uh? How do you feel about them? Well, the you know, Tesla’s an amazing product that uh is catching on, but it’s still a pretty small percentage of the market, it’s a premium priced vehicle and they lost their 7 500 tax credit, so uh, it’s making it tougher. Now a ton of the other manufacturers are going to come in, partly because of 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 going to be easy. You know transport is hard. Industrial is hard, it’s a wide range of Innovations. We’Re going to need, and also I read that especially in the U.S 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 than for a truck, So eventually batteries might work for a truck, but it’s a far more difficult problem. Uh, because just the weight is a is a lot higher there or 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 high percentage, and you get the electric sources to be zero emission. Then you’ve got that passenger transport car piece near getting near to zeros.
That’S the goal. The AI conversation seems like it’s kind of hard to ignore it in 2019, and I’ve had conversations with other people who are more negative about it, more pessimistic about just Ai and 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 in uh 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 you want to 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, if we wanted not just people live longer, but them to live really quality years and not have The medical costs be expanding.
That scenario, 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 um. 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 five percent and with the writing Innovations we can get it uh by 2030 to two and a half percent, so we’ve gone from 12 million, we’re dying to now 6 million, and so it’s every year, Six Million Lives saved. All these things are tricky because you don’t want to say to people uh that we we shouldn’t be mad about the remaining problem.
Uh so saying to people hey, feel good about the progress, and still you know be mad – that that six million are still dying. 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: okay and The Innovation and science that will give us new tools like an HIV vaccine, a malaria vaccine, you know so in my lifetime. I hope the whole issue of these diseases that are tough in poor countries, mostly infectious diseases. We can essentially solve those problems and we’re close on on polio eradication.
When I look at politics, I have to admit the 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 uh. I I don’t bring, unlike the biology where I get to study it see it. You know, I’m on the same footing as everybody and seen 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 uh, an enjoyable life.
We are making great progress on those things. So as long as we stay committed to them, you know that it, it makes me love the work and and remain optimistic all right. Well, I 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 someone in my position, I’m not 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: uh 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 uh you know, volunteer work in the United States builds that sense of okay. We care about other humans. Even you know, beyond our own uh family group, even people have very different experiences. So you know at a young age a little bit of giving money away. Uh, 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 uh, who, I think, will help kind of bring the world together and you know avoid uh just this divisiveness. That is, is my greatest concern. I couldn’t end at Bill Gates interview without asking: can you still jump over a chair? That’S a good question uh, probably not, and it would if it was a very small chair I’ll count that as a victory, that’s a victory right. No, I used to be a believing Trump over a garbage can, but I’m I’m afraid I do.
I played tennis, so I’m in reasonable shape, but not my jumping skills. That’S all good! I appreciate it hey thanks again for that. Thanks for coming out yeah, I appreciate it it’s great to meet you. Hopefully we get to do it again. .