Should humans settle on Mars? Will there be another pandemic? Can we eradicate poverty?
We asked Bill Gates about the future. Here's what he said …
Gates Foundation #goalkeepers2030
We asked Bill Gates about the future. Here's what he said …
Gates Foundation #goalkeepers2030
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00:00The Earth is incredibly hospitable compared to Mars.
00:05I don't see any future for us if we don't take care of Earth.
00:14Yes, we don't know when, but we made a mistake not being ready for this one.
00:20We were lucky that the death rate wasn't even higher.
00:26And so investments so that we can stop it before it goes global,
00:34you know, the benefits of that are very, very large.
00:42Well, AI is getting better and better.
00:44You know, if you make jobs more productive, that can be definitely a good thing.
00:48You know, just like we made agriculture more productive,
00:51and so we freed up people to do other things.
00:53I don't think we'll lose control to AI.
00:56I do think that as it progresses, the job markets will change.
01:02And so we'll have to reskill people to work in the areas we still have needs.
01:07I mean, after all, we've got free labor to help old people
01:11and help handicapped kids or have, you know, classroom sizes very small.
01:18You know, human labor is a valuable thing.
01:21And so if we use those improvements in the right way,
01:26overall, we can improve the human condition.
01:32The Earth is incredibly hospitable compared to Mars.
01:37And so I don't see any future for us if we don't take care of Earth.
01:43You know, we may have a few people in other places,
01:46but overwhelmingly the issue is doing a good job
01:50and staying here on Earth.
01:56I think so.
01:57The piece of innovation of doing things the green way,
02:02you know, making cement a different way, making steel a different way,
02:08having transportation that uses electricity that was made with no emissions.
02:16There's a path.
02:17And so I think the big question is, do we get there fast enough?
02:21And do we help with the adaptation requirements that in the meantime,
02:26you know, particularly the poor countries near the equator are suffering?
02:30You know, they deserve our help, even as we go full speed ahead,
02:35trying to get emissions to zero as fast as we possibly can.
02:40Yes, for short distance air travel, batteries are good enough.
02:46For long distance travel, no.
02:48We'll have to either use green fuels or even perhaps green hydrogen
02:54to power those planes because the batteries can only take you a modest distance.
03:04There are areas of the world like parts of the world where
03:08the ability to grow food, particularly in the face of climate change,
03:13you know, makes that uneconomic.
03:15Food requires water and very inexpensive water.
03:20Trade in food helps us where you can have bad weather in one part of the world
03:26and you avoid the malnutrition and price spikes by having the parts of the world
03:31that had good weather make their food available.
03:34Africa should become a net food exporter.
03:37The small hodl farmers there deserve to have export markets.
03:44You know, we want to raise their incomes.
03:46There are parts of the world that won't be self-sufficient,
03:48but Africa in particular, we need to help them so they are a net exporter.
03:58Well, certainly infectious disease, which is very common in Africa,
04:02certainly infectious disease, which is where I'm spending all the resources I have.
04:09I think we can reduce those deaths super dramatically,
04:13including eradicating polio and measles and malaria,
04:19and so almost no infectious disease deaths.
04:22I don't think humans will live forever,
04:24but the infectious disease that are what kill most children, those we can get rid of.
04:33Well, poverty has come down pretty dramatically, and that's an incredible achievement.
04:42Poverty can be cut to near zero.
04:46We have countries becoming richer.
04:50They can be more generous to the poor countries.
04:54A lot of the big population countries like India, Brazil, Indonesia,
05:01Vietnam are becoming middle-income countries, so we can help the poorest countries even more.
05:07Poverty has gone down, and we can get it down to very, very low levels.