比尔·盖茨：如果重返20岁，我会用AI教电脑吸收所有书本知识（附视频&对话稿）
点击上方“精彩英语演讲”，选择“设为星标”
英语演讲视频，第一时间观看
6月24日，比尔·盖茨在华盛顿经济俱乐部的一次活动上，被问及如果重返20岁从哈佛大学辍学创业，会涉足什么领域。他表示，根据自己的背景会创立一家人工智能公司，教电脑阅读，吸收所有的书面知识，这是人工智能尚未取得进展的领域。
盖茨表示，当下是创新的好时机，因为创新的工具越来越好了， 生物领域的很多事情都很有趣，能源领域也有很多有趣的事情，鉴于我自己的背景，我会创立一家AI公司，来教电脑如何阅读，使它们可以消化，吸收所有的书面知识，这是人工智能尚未取得进展的领域。
“我们一旦实现了这个目标，影响将会非常深远”，盖茨说。
此前，比尔·盖茨在参加风投公司Village Global举办的交流活动时谈到，自己在微软最大的失误就是让微软成为那个“非苹果”的操作系统平台，而让Android崛起了，这是价值4000亿美元的生意。
他认为，在软件世界是一个胜利者的舞台。这句话可能有两层意思，一是当时微软是数一数二的软件巨头，但却错失了移动端的机会；二是如今iOS和Android称霸，成了新胜利者，微软想打破，几乎是不可能了。
thank you.
for all members of the panel, is there one area of inquiry --
we will leave this hearing at this point and go live now to remarks from bill gates, he's sitting down on conversation on wide range of topics including climatechange from economic club of washington, live coverage on c-span.
david m. rubenstein
so for about years or so but because you've given so much money, the richest man is jeff bezos. if -- do you think that if you had stayed in college to get a degree --
a sign that i haven't given away money fast enough to drop out of top and the market has been wrong. [applause]
bill gates
actually market has been strong. microsoft is up % this year. to what do you attribute that?
the most powerful companies in the world are the technology companies, microsoft has a god share of that, i get to spend about a sixth of my time over at microsoft, so --
bill gates
so recently you said that the biggest mistake you've made professionally was that microsoft should have had the android technology, why was that the biggestmistake?
well, when you're in a field and you're doing what was called windows mobile, remised being the mobile operating by very tinny amount, tough trial, we didn'tassign the best people to do the work. biggest mistake i made and clearly the company that -- that should have achieved that and we didn't and stopped momentum to go to android and became the operating system globally.
today you're the only company over a trillion dollars, so how much better could you have been? [laughter]
bill gates
well, market cap is only an indirect thing that in an imperfect way will reflect what the company is doing, microsoft would be far more valuable if we had won the operating system competition, android is huge asset for google.
bill gates
recently i had a chance to interview your wife belinda and she describes how you met and she said that you approached her in a parking lot and you asked her for a date and you said in weeks we could have a date and she said that wasn't spontaneous enough and then she gave you her number and then you called her right away and said tonight and said that spontaneous enough.
it worked out?
it did.
david m. rubenstein
let's talk about what you most want to focus on today which is breakthrough energy and what you're doing in climate change era, two main areas of focus are k to education and health care in least wealthiest people around the world. why are you so worried about climate change?
bill gates
well. the -- climate change gets worse every year, what you have to do is dramatic in reshaping the entire physical economy that we have, the greatestconsequence that we would have are farmers in poor countries, droughts, the floods, the heat, will cause a problem, we already have a malnutrition and deprivation to get substantially worse and it's a very complex problem, not just the r&d part but the recreation of products and deployment of products so helping educate people about, okay, what -- what are the sources of these greenhouse houses and how do you get on a path of innovation so that you can get global adoption and actually bring emissions down dramatically, you know, i have that now as a priority to articulate.
the south side of the foundation?
bill gates
okay, the part where you mitigate and help the poor countries where better seeds, better policies partly through development aids, that's through the foundation, mitigation part, the part where you invent new ways of making fuel, electricity, cement, steel, meat, that's done directly by me with a lot of investments including the funds that you mentioned, ventures is a fun that i assembled a group of people to put money into companies that are trying to commercialize, breakthrough.
a $ million, you put in million, can $ billion make a difference?
bill gates
a billion, they have investments, late next year will probably raise another billion to a billion and a half, you know, this is all about innovation broadly defined, we need to make these dramatic changes and right now the premium, if you said, okay, you to make steel but no emissions, that steel would cost you four times what steel does today. your electric bill would more than double if we take the technology we have today, yes, supporting those companies and drawing other investors in, green investing didn't go very well in the first realm and so it looked like the field that might evaporate and not only they've been able to invest, the first billion fully committed within the next year but we've got other investors, so that's gone quite well. the technology, they only invest in companies who have a chance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by half a percent each -- each company. they found and i'm sure they'll find another investor.
i'm the smallest investor, am i going to get my money back?
bill gates
probably one of the things you invest is high risk and likely to have significant successes, you can deduct it, but risk of return are high. we do expect to make profit out of the fund.
why do you think some people that there's no such a thing of climate change, what is compelling to say there's no climate change, political reason, there'ssome people who don't believe that there's climate change?
bill gates
well, they must not have taken enough science courses or something, i don't know.
bill gates
climate change requires in-depth study. the united states has become partisan issue which is unfortunate, you know, might make it harder to achieve the type of agreements we need in the united states, we have two people, people that deny climate change and those who think it's easy to solve.
global warming from climate change?
bill gates
the problems caused by the greenhouse gases is worse than just the average temperature going up. it causes there to be extremes of precipitations, you know turn up my air-condition and so the idea that the sea level rise, heat wave, these things are -- climate change is probably better term to capture breath of problems.
the history of human civilization, any evidence that people will do things that will affect their great, great grandchildren but that they won't see the benefit from? in other words, if you try to eliminate carbon in the atmosphere you can't really do it in your lifetime because the carbon is trapped there, maybe if we change policy a years from now they'll be reduction, barely rarely people want to do something that will help their great, great unborn grandchildren, how do you motivate people to do something?
bill gates
the united states has been willing to take on very difficult problems like cancer and make gigantic investments knowing that the real payoff would be many decades down the road. when that was first being pushed, people were saying, hey, this is important. climate change is like that where you got to take a long-term perspective and government did its best when it's taking the long-term perspective and funding the basic r&d and the policies that lead to scaled appointment.
so today if we do nothing with respect to climate change will the oceans rise up and have ocean front land or is it going to be under water in or years?
bill gates
not -- well, uncertainty in models are still fairly fine, we have peter -- meter or -meters. the numbers have gone up. before the ipcc only took the mostconservative view which would have been half meter, now the understanding is at least a meter and significant possibility that it's -meters.
electricity grid is % or so.
exactly.
% comes from agriculture and forestry, why is that causing such a big increase in carbon?
well, the net category is a variety of things, when you clear land, you're taking the carbon in trees, plants, releasing all of them, like burning the land say in indonesia for palm oil plantation and the other thing like cows and grass-eating species have a digested system that emits methane and methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas and cows alone account for % of global emissions and so we need to change cows.
cows.
bill gates
actually of all the categories, the one that is has gone better is this work and so you have people like impossible or beyond meat which i invested.
do you eat it?
absolutely.
healthier for you or atmosphere?
bill gates
slightly healthier for you in terms of less cholesterol, it's, of course, dramatic reduction in methane emissions, you know, animal cruelty, manure management and the pressure that meat consumption puts on land use, the main reason we need to increase is not the population increase, it's as countries get richer eat more meat and meat is an inefficient way of creating calories and so it's super helpful.
with respect to solar, for example, is solar a solution to our problems?
it's part of of solution, if the sun would shine hours a day --
it does.
somewhere, then that % you'd have a solution, so wind and solar are very helpful and the fact that the prices have come down quite a bit, but people think, may think that's a total solution to that electric sector, electricity unfortunately has to be reliable, it's got to work during, you know, -day period that tokyo needs giga watts of electricity, no solar, no wind for 0day periods. the need to have base load generations like nuclear or others, or to have a miracle in storage so that you can save that energy is very high. the final solution to climate change, when we get to zero, a lot of things that use hydrocarbon would shift over to use electricity, one of the necessary elements is to get electricity to zero but the electric sector even in the u.s. will have to more than double in size because transportation and buildings and industrial applications that have used hydrocarbons directly will shift over to use electricity.
electric grids, that's been in the news lately with respect to what we might have done in russia and are you worried that if we had big electrical grids theunited states could be subject to be knocked out by cyber terrorism?
bill gates
well, that's even true today. there are things like internet in the electric grid that modern society is very dependent upon. so as we grow the electric sector, we will have to take that very seriously. the u.s. has not built substantial transmission, even some various projects, even that didn't get built, there's a real policy problem with transmission which is a necessary piece of eventual zero-emission-electricity solution.
you have been investor in nuclear technology, is that the solution, better nuclear plants?
bill gates
it is for many, many locations an important part of the solution to have energy that's available on demand and today's nuclear plants unfortunately, their safety characteristics, just don't make them competitive, so the two still being built in the u.s., that would be fairly extensive electricity, so the third generation of nuclear which is what seems right now is way to expensive. the question is can we create a -- a new generation, fourth generation advance nuclear whose economics are over twice as good, whose safety is much better and the answer is yes, we can, because we haven't done new generation of nuclear and we have much better understanding of how to do that. whether the united states will step up for the pilot plant for the fourth generation is a question.
what about fusion? is that an answer?
bill gates
it's very exciting and very difficult to do. there's about companies that are messing around with fusion, put money into mit-related one called common wealth fusion systems, that technologically is very, very difficult, no one has gotten to so called energy break even where you have to create million-degrees of temperature in order for the reaction in the sun, the fusion to take place and so to do that economically and get net power output is a huge scientific challenge, it definitely should be funded but unlike fusion that's very straightforward engineering to build that next generation does require invention. fusion requires a lot of invention.
what about electric cars, do you think that's a solution?
it absolutely -- if you look at the transport sector --
%.
bill gates
passenger cars with about another factor, or in battery improvement which is possible, the mainstream for passenger cars can become electric, you to make that transition, you've got to make sure electricity is emission, but for trucks and trains there's almost no chance batteries would be good enough and there showl still need to create liquid fuels either with electricity, biofuels, some way, fuels are amazing, you know, the emergency density of gasoline is times the energy density of best battery we can make, if you look at a container ship that crosses the ocean, having fuels be % less efficient, % of the weight would be the batteries instead of cargo, so it's unlikely to work in those cases so we need ways of making fuels that are zero carbon.
when you talked to heads of state about this, do they roll their eyes, happy to meet with you, can i have a selfie, do they really do anything and what are you trying to get heads of state to do?
well, in the paris climate conference one of the things that was missing was the focus on r&d and france actually said yes, we want this for the first time at a cost a real issue that gets the scotts and it was called mission innovation which prime minister moti got to pick the name, that commitment of over governments to double energy r&d was significant milestone that came out of that conference. in order to get that commitment ui had to make commitment that there would be breakthrough energy that would take things out of labs and help them get into the marketplace and so there's been some progress, climate is complicated enough that, you know, you don't want -- you want a broad set of people in the government to understand the complexities and in terms of the r&d where it needs to be done, unless the u.s. is engaged unlikely to happen because so much of the world's capacity to do innovation is here in the united states.
the united states pulled out more or less of the paris accord, though, not technically so for another year or so, is that of concern to you and do you think this is going to hurt the effort to change climate change around the world.
yeah, it's a huge step backwards. even if you meet all the current commitments in that climate accord, you're still way over -degrees of warming and most countries are behind commitments they make, compare emissions and there's a little bit about that's easy, natural gas, one-time thing is a lot of that and yet the world is falling short and so to have people like the united states say, okay, even that's not important, it just shows how daunting it's going to be, there's no way we will get there without the u.s. coming back in a strong way.
do you think if you meet with president trump you can convince him on paris or is that beyond your capabilities to do that?
i -- i -- someone else should do that. [laughter]
all right. so let me go back for a moment to early days, you famously dropped out of harvard and you then started your company, but i think said subsequentlythat actually you thought the computer revolution was occurring or software revolution was occurring but you were wrong and if you stayed in harvard for years or so it wouldn't have made a big difference, is that right or not?
bill gates
yes, the urgency that i felt that if i didn't get microsoft right away somebody would do a great job working software company and we didn't have a chance, that probably not being true, i could have waited or years and the opportunity to do microsoft would have been there. anyway, i felt the sense of urgency and it's not like -- today things like the learning company because it's a great book, it's not like i missed some part of my education.
when you dropped out your father and mother said are you sure you know what you want to do, if one of your children dropped out of college to start a newcompany, what would you say?
well, i would have to say. the -- yes.
bill gates
the dropping out is not decision. you can always go back. if you don't have kids that you need to support it's a very low-risk thing particularly in the culture in the united states where trying to start something and failing is not black light of life.
what was it to enable you to beat everyone else in business, bill gates, what was the unique factor that made you the most successful?
bill gates
yeah, we were actually the first but there were companies and all single-product companies who got ahead of us in terms of sales, you know, buy -- by about we did become the largest of all of them, we weren't an engineering company, we were about how you hire smart people and tools to develop software broadly. so, for example, word perfect was a word processor, somebody might remember, they did so well with the product that growth sales rivaled ours when we were doing products, windows that became mainstream in 95 we became far larger than the other software companies. now, subsequently, you know, google, apple, amazon have become, you know, also extremely successful, but in the 9's we were the strongest by far.
okay, the largest companies in the world in the united states are technology companies, apple, facebook, google, microsoft and so forth, you worry thatthere's too much power and too much data in the hands of technology companies and are you surprised that government hasn't done something more than they've done today about that?
bill gates
well, technology has become so central that government has to think, okay, what does that mean about elections, what does it mean about bullying, what does that mean about wire-tapping authority that is let you find out what's going on financially or, you know, drugs, money laundering, things like that, so, yes, the government needs to get involved. i for the earlier years of microsoft said to people i didn't have an office in washington, d.c. and eventually i regret that statement because it's like taunting washington, d.c. and so now the technology companies partly because of microsoft, they could have seen that lesson through at&t or ibm or kodak, they are engaged. they'll be more regulation of tech sector, things like privacy and i'm sure they'll be federal regulation, the fact that now consumes media has broadened into a realm that we need to shape it so that the benefits outweigh, outweigh the negatives.
all right, so it's said that when facebook was coming along you would try to buy facebook, you regret not paying a higher price because you could have bought it for a billion or billion?
bill gates
we bought a small part of facebook and that was a super successful investment. what mark did wasn't within our ambient, unlike mobile operating systemwhich absolutely was because of engineering culture, doing social network thing, we weren't depth, now we have linkedin which for professional communication and networking is in a very strong position and helps lots of growth opportunities.
there was a company that was started in seattle near you, company called amazon, and they were supposed to be selling books over the internet and later other things but then they started web services cloud business and now you're number and are you surprised that you were beaten to that game by company that wasn't the software company?
bill gates
well, the natural companies to do the cloud would have been your classic enterprise venders, ibm, oracle, sap who in terms of horizontal cloud aren't there at all. it is a surprise and huge credit to jeff bezos and his team that they got out in front and did the best cloud product. today the microsoft is a strong number and huge distance to number and so it is a source for microsoft, but, yes, many companies including microsoft who should feel bad that they didn't -- they didn't get ahead of amazon in doing that work.
so if you were years old today and you wanted to start a new company, drop out of harvard, what company or what area would you want to start it in?
bill gates
well, this is a great time to be doing innovation because the tools of innovation are so much better. there are lots of things in biology that are very interesting,there are lots of things in energy that are interesting, given my background i would start an ai company that the goal would be to teach computers how to read so that they can absorb and understand all the written knowledge of the world, that's an area where ai has yet to make a progress and will be quite profound when we achieve that goal.
so are you worried about the power of ai to disrupt our civilization, put people out of work, those kinds of things?
bill gates
the increased connectivity that would come from ai will create dilemmas about what should people do with that extra time and you've got to consider that a good thing even though it will be an interesting set of adjustments that have to take place.
so most people over the last years or so whoever the wealthiest person was, didn't work that hard when they were or , what motivates you to still work so hard?
bill gates
i love my work, the work of the foundation is interesting, i get to meet with scientists, i get to go in the field, your habits are sort of sets in your 's and 's and mystandards of 's, you know, i didn't believe in weekends back then, not to mention vacation, some fairly lazy compared to 's. all i believed in was working on software, night and day and for my 's that was perfect. i didn't have a wife or family at all and my role was very hands on role. you know, i'm very lucky that my foundation worked, the part time work i do for microsoft, i see that extending for decades into the future and having an understanding of innovation, you know, i think shaping innovation in many of the areas, there's the unique role that i can help play.
okay. but being bill gates and being famous over the last quarter century, can you go to a restaurant and people don't bother you?
people are pretty nice about that particularly if i'm with my family, people are discreet.
you're driving a car people ever stair at you --
sure. sure, that's okay.
and when your sport now is tennis?
that's right.
you play with some of the best players, roger federer and you get points off of those players?
not if they're playing full out, not a chance.
and you've given up golf, that was one of your other sports?
largely given up, still play a little bit.
what about bridge?
i love playing bridge, it's a game that the players are aging quite a bit, hasn't caught on with young people.
good or bad?
it's unfortunate because it's a great game, but --
so when you want to go buy something, can you go in a department store and buy anything or how do you shop, you shop online or buy anything, use credit card or cash, what do you do?
bill gates
for a while i didn't do that much but it's something one of my daughters enjoy thing is helping pick clothes for me, we go out and go shopping together and she's got good taste, it's a neat father-daughter activity.
one time your wife told me that you dropped your daughter off in college the first day at stanford she graduated now, the roommate didn't know that she wasgoing to be the roommate and you needed things to fix up the room and you went to lowes to buy things in lowes, was it unusual for you to go to lowes, did people stare at you or go to wal-mart?
it was hard to assemble. [laughter]
you know, i wanted augmented reality to help, show me how to put pieces together properly. people are very nice, you know, overall super nice.
you're relaxing today, is it trip with your family, go to place you've never been before, go on boat, play tennis, the best way to relax?
you know traveling and i get to do quite a bit of reading on that case.
you read how many books a year, you try to read --
.
books a year.
and you comment on those books and recommend those books?
probably a year i do serious reviews of. i mentioned once i'm reading the stroops, the great history of the united states, but there's so many fantastic books.
i have one coming up, can you review that?
i will, i will.
let's go back to your foundation.
i asked people all of the time, i say to them, suppose you had the problem with bill gate and linda gates, billion or whatever it might be, okay, i give you $ billion and then you go buy yacht, plane, then you have . billion left, what do you do with that and did you have the problem and you assessed the two most urgent issues k to in the united states and health in less developed areas, any regrets and have you made progress on either of those two?
bill gates
well, health is biggest area and there the progress has been really unbelievable not just because of our work but because partners that include the u.s. governmentspending, european donors that really stepped up on health issues, one of the metrics of importance is the number of children who die before the age of . when we got started in the year , that was over million a year, now million a year. and so, you know, it's mind blowing and people are not aware of the issues as like them to be. those deaths because of getting out vaccines and understanding a bit more about nutrition, those deaths have been cut in half. now the goal is to cut them in half again by and we do have pipeline of new vaccines and -- and new tools particularly in nutrition that give us an opportunity to do that. because of partnerships we've had and innovation, more successful than we've expected. our u.s. education work that is not just k through but includes higher ed as well, the key metrics dropout rates, math and verbal achievement, those metrics have moved essentially not at all and even as the u.s. is spending more resources on education, we spend by far more than any country in the world and yet our results are quite a bit worse than almost all the other rich countries and even some middle-income countries, even vietnam now is passing us in terms of their math results, so the -- the field will hold and does not have impact we hope for.
part of what we try to do is common core and that was controversial but now largely been adopted?
bill gates
yeah, so in the united states there were some very strange things that is our math test books were twice the size of the other countries, in fact, times the size of singapore which has the best math education in the world and that come about because of this process where the textbook companies always wanted adoption of new textbooks so they didn't have to compete with used textbooks, they got thicker and thicker. the u.s. would would tend to try to teach too much in a year instead of really cementing the basic knowledge and so the idea of the common core was to say, what math should you learn in various grades, make sure that by high school graduation you have reasonable math skills. and so it became more rigorous, it matched what the best standards in u.s. were which were in massachusetts and it meant that all the online materials and kids who moved between school system would have alignment and the world's most logical thing and yet it was super packed, you know, as though math in one state is different in another state. almost a subtle thing.
so warren buffet, can you describe your relationship with him? he is a little bit older than you and you've developed close relationship and ultimately he gave you a large part of his fortune for your foundation, how did that come about and were you surprised that he did that?
yes. warren's years older than i am. you know, he's absolutely an amazing person and i was lucky enough to meet him in . i didn't --
reluctantly.
i didn't think i wanted to meet him buying and selling stock as value added part of society.
except for private equity. [laughter]
bill gates
i'm more involved in the innovation part but when i met warren, the fact that he had this model of how the world worked, you know, he asked me why can't ibm put you out of business which is a very smart question, you know, because of the time ibm was , times our size and yet we would go on in terms of software innovation and even value company to surpass ibm who was the dominant computer company when i was growing up by --
when you developed the software for their ibm pc they should have bought it from you as opposed by licensing it?
bill gates
that would have helped them but wouldn't have changed things. what happened in computing required really thinking about the micro processor and it reallyis kind of dilemma, way of looking at personal computing that technologies that came out of that now dominate everything, corporate computing, cloud computing.
warren buffet, you developed the relationship with him, became bridge player with him.
yeah.
one day he calls you, guess what, i have extra $ billion, i don't know what to do with them, i will give it to you, what do you say?
it was unbelievable that he chose a substantial part, he created foundation that are -- that he's giving substantial money to, high percentage of that went to our foundation, basically doubled our ambition and so, you know, going after malaria eradication, new seeds, we added agricultural thing, we added sanitation because of incredible resources. we asked him and he said no. anyway, warren is an unbelievable person, i've learned immense about from warren.
bill gates
everywhere you go, i have thing you should invest in, i have a couple i will mention later, for a couple of things you should invest to or give money to, how do you resist, do you have a person that says no for you or how do you do that?
bill gates
many people. once you pick what your care about, if somebody has something that can make a difference in global health we are super interested, we have staff of people and if it's to do with global and some people talk through whatever your innovation is and how we can partner with you on that, you know, that's clearly in our area, if it's something that substantially improve k through education, then we will be very interesting in it. if people are asking outside of those things, then, you know, fortunately you can say no because focus is key.
so people have recognized over the years that raising children is difficult, if you mess up raising your children nothing else matters. you have children,seem to be well adjusted and you kept them out of newspapers and so forth, how did you do that and is that been more of a challenge raising healthy kids with wealthy background that you have, how do you avoid spoiling kids like that?
bill gates
i think that's a huge problem. you know, obviously our kids have benefited from having a great education and opportunity to travel and, you know, so they have very lucky in that sense, making sure that the visibility of the way people treat them is not unnatural, there's some challenges that come about, so far they've handled it well. melinda is the one that deserves all the credit for the kids so far doing very well. you know, our kids we've said to them that, you know, the money is going to the foundation and so they don't think of themselves assort of aristocratic.
can you give me a little bit or something, they don't ask for some?
they'll get a little bit. [laughter]
but are they going to be involved in the foundation?
no.
the foundation you have a finite length of the foundation, i think it's years?
yeah.
so why not have foundation?
bill gates
well, warren has influenced my thinking on this quite a bit, the idea -- our foundation is aimed at eliminating the diseases that disproportionately affect the poor, try to make it fundamental where your born chance of survival and longing a long healthy life are equal throughout the world. that should be achievable, you know, assume melinda will live another say years, that gives us years to solve those problems. that's doable and we should take all of our money and put it against u.s. education and global health and they'll be problems in the future at least from my grave i won't understand very well and they'll be rich people, in fact, more rich people in the future than there are today so they should use their intelligence and understanding to go after those problems, having a pile of my money left over to go after those problems just doesn't make any sense.
how much money has your foundation given away today?
about $ billion.
billion.
we are now up to giving $ billion a year.
okay, that's pretty good. [applause]
so do you have any regrets of not having started philanthropy earlier? you didn't retire microsoft about or so?
bill gates
until the year i had not done significant philanthropy. i had given a few hundred million dollars, in the year i put $ billion into the foundation and so that's when we got serious.
i say so.
i was part time on the foundation work from to -- , sorry, when i retired from microsoft and then i flipped so i was full-time at the foundation and part time at microsoft and that's worked out well for me, you know, some of the issues, yes, i wish for hiv vaccine we had started sooner because we would be further along, anyway, the timing has worked out well.
david m. rubenstein
do you have any regrets in your life, you have a life that most people would love to live, happy family, great marriage, business success, is there anything, make us feel good by saying you have done something that didn't work out, all of us feel bad because we look at you and can't look at you, there has to be something.
i am super lucky. marrying melinda, the experience at microsoft but although it had ups and downs phenomenal, the work of the foundation, and --
no regrets about anything?
bill gates
i wouldn't change anything. for example, the antitrust lawsuit against microsoft, you know, was bad for the company, it created a lot of distraction, we would have done a lot of things if it hadn't been for that, in a way it was a lesson for me and probably accelerated my retirement by or years which overall for me probably was a good thing, i don't think it was a principal set of activities but that's another story.
today the greatest pleasure of your life is when you're doing what other than being interviewed by me or what are the greatest pleasure of your life?
bill gates
you know time with kids, time with scientists, time when i'm reading and things are making sense, you know, going out and seeing the impact of the foundation'swork, meeting with saturday nighttists who think we -- scientists, these are super interesting problems and, you know, having a broad set of system thinking applied to these problems is going to be necessary to orchestrate the resources and policies behind them, i love my work.
so your children are not married i think is that right?
not yet.
when they are are you looking forward to having grandchildren?
absolutely.
would you teach them software or --
no, i don't think of microsoft as organization. [laughter]
i'm just one person i don't have the resource that is bill gates have, what can an average person do to have impact on climate change in your view?
bill gates
certainly they as a consumer can take things like the new meat products or how they get electricity and help drive up the scale of the green solutions. themost important things at this stage is their political voice. there's going to be a need to put substantial resources into this effort we will need a bipartisan solution and to send the right signal to the market, you actually don't -- if you just win one year and then it gets repealed, that doesn't help at all. the key is what people see the policies will be over the next years on a consistent basis and that means it's a much higher bar than just a one-time victory.
david m. rubenstein
i should have asked you, linda and warren buffet, if i would like to convey message, the average person, what would you ask the average person to do?
bill gates
well, the best thing is to pick a couple of causes that you believe in deeply and find organizations that you can get involved in. the social services and local communities, charter schools and local communities, there's a host of very high-impact local things. the dollars you give to global needs actually will have substantially more impact per dollar because the, you know, if you can safe a life for a thousand dollars, you fund measles vaccination or polio eradication, those things are, you know, pretty mind blowing in terms of the difference they can make. fill an thropy is not comparing every single cause and choosing the most impactful. has to be something that connects with you personally, even the climate area, whether it's advocacy or behavior's consumer, there's lots that people can do that give us -- will increase chance of success.
so bill, i want to thank you for taking time, we have two gifts for you, one is this, we know you're a puzzle fan so we have a puzzle made up of washington, d.c., you can see.
fantastic. [applause]
good job, thanks. [applause] [inaudible conversations]
finishing up coverage of bill gates remarks at the economic public washington, if you missed any of the live broadcast this event will be online shortly to view any time, go to website c-span.org and just type bill gates in the video search box. looking congress and house today both in session, the house gaveling in about just under half hour for speeches at for legislative business, more work expected on spending bills, any requested votes taking place at eastern, the senate will gavel in at more debate expected on defense programs and policy bill with vote to officially proceed to the measure set for eastern today.
If Bill Gates were to drop out of Harvard University and start a new company today, it would be one that focuses on artificial intelligence, he said in an interview on Monday.
The perspective shows that the Microsoft co-founder hasn’t lost interest in the technology industry where his company has operated for the past 44 years.
“Given my background, I would start an AI company whose goal would be to teach computers how to read, so that they can absorb and understand all the written knowledge of the world. That’s an area where AI has yet to make progress, and it will be quite profound when we achieve that goal,” Gates told David Rubinstein at an Economic Club of Washington event in the nation’s capital on Monday.
Gates has invested in Luminous, a start-up developing silicon for AI. Microsoft itself is incorporating AI into its own software while also providing ways for other companies to draw on AI in their products.
Another area Microsoft has been working to commercialize is augmented reality, including with its HoloLens headset. Gates, who now spends about one-sixth of his time at Microsoft, mentioned this type of technology in Monday’s conversation.
Rubinstein said Bill’s wife Melinda Gates had told him that at one point Gates had to go to a store to buy furniture for his daughter’s new room at Stanford University.
“It was actually kind of hard to assemble some of that stuff,” Gates said in response. “I wanted augmented reality to help show me how to put the pieces together properly.”
Beyond technology, Gates said he’s fascinated by developments in biology and energy.
He said he enjoys the time he spends at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the 1,500-person nonprofit where he is a co-chair and trustee. He finds the problem of climate change “super interesting,” he said, and said he gets to meet with scientists and go out into the field.
“I love my work,” he said. He said that if people have ideas that could make a difference in public health or could improve K-12 education, we’re “super-interested.”
He likes spending time with his children, and he plays tennis and bridge. And when he wants to relax, he likes to travel, and read. In a single year he’ll read 50 books and review around 15.
往期精彩英语演讲集
比尔盖茨推荐的极简经济学：30分钟看懂世界经济机器是如何运转的（附双语视频）川普真奇葩? 比尔·盖茨暴露川普分不清HIV与HPV，却记住了我女儿（附视频）
这是我看过最有“味道”的英文演讲！比尔盖茨手握粪便罐上台为新厕所代言（附视频&演讲稿）
还在抢日本马桶？让比尔盖茨喝尿的英国神厕才是真牛X（附视频）
比尔盖茨北大演讲：未来中国这四个领域最赚钱！你知道是哪些吗？（附视频&演讲稿）
比尔·盖茨退休10年啦！在微软最后一天他居然演了场大戏？（附视频）
防止未来失联
请长按识别二维码关注备用号
想第一时间接收英语演讲文章&视频？把精彩英语演讲设置为星标就对了！操作办法就是：进入公众号——点击右上角的●●●——找到“设为星标”点击即可。