比尔·盖茨：技术创新会加大不平等吗？

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技术是否会加剧不平等？在新形势下，我们应该如何理解创新与慈善？针对这些热点问题，在21日召开的国家卫健委-盖茨基金会结核病防治项目十周年研讨会上，网易研究局采访了比尔及梅琳达·盖茨基金会联席主席比尔·盖茨。

比尔·盖茨谈技术创新

以下为采访实录：

网易研究局：有人认为技术创新会加大世界的不平等，因为高精尖的技术会更多地被发达国家掌握和利用，你赞同这种观点吗？如何让贫穷的国家，比如非洲，平等地享有技术创新带来的好处？

比尔·盖茨：如果你看预期寿命或儿童存活率，这是两个相当有趣的指标。今天，即使在收入很低的贫困国家，儿童存活率和预期寿命也提高了得多。这是天花疫苗、麻疹疫苗、绿色革命中的小麦或水稻种子等带来的结果。很多技术都能够帮助到最贫困的人群，帮助他们的孩子避免被天花、麻疹、腹泻、肺炎或疟疾夺走生命。

向贫穷国家提供的对外援助或慈善捐助，主要是为了帮助最有需要的人群。

如果我们能够研发出艾滋病疫苗或结核病疫苗，就会大幅度促进全球平等，因为这些疾病大多发生在最贫困的人群中。 如果我们能给这些贫困的农民提供种子，使他们不受气候变化的影响，这对全球平等也是一个巨大的促进。盖茨基金会所有工作的核心是通过创新来帮助最贫困的人群。创新可以让世界变得更好。但向贫困国家提供创新方案的过程中，我们需要非常谨慎。这有时需要时间。例如很多癌症治疗都非常昂贵，在贫困国家无法获得。但现在我们能够推广很多治疗高血压的方法，过去治疗高血压的药物很贵，医生和器械费用也很高，但现在已经变得很便宜，我们的合作伙伴甚至能在最贫困的国家推广高血压检测和治疗，挽救了很多人的生命。

如果我们有意识地去推动，就能确保创新是促进平等的。技术最大的不平等是，中等收入和富裕国家的做法造成了气候变化，但绝大部分后果却由贫困国家承担。我们必须解决这个非常棘手的问题，否则创新就会成为增加不平等的例子。

ENGLISH VERSION：

NERB（NetEase Economic Research Bureau）Some aspects of technological innovation will increase global inequality because most technologies are controlled and used by developed countries. Do you agree? And how can low-income countries, especially those in Africa, share benefits of technological innovations?

BILL GATES: Well, if you look at life expectancy or childhood survival, which are two fairly interesting things, today, even at very low levels of income, child survival and life expectancy is much higher even for very poor countries. And that's because of technologies like the smallpox vaccine, the measles vaccine, the Green Revolution seeds for wheat or rice. Many technologies do help the poorest and helps avoid their children dying of smallpox or measles or diarrhea or pneumonia or malaria.

The foreign aid to those poor countries or the philanthropy to those poor countries is specifically aimed at helping those most in need.

If we can get an HIV vaccine or a TB vaccine, it is actually a huge help for global equity as these diseases are mostly amongst the poorest. If we can get seeds to these poor farmers so that they don't suffer from climate change, that's a huge help for global equity. Everything the foundation does is about taking innovation to help the poorest. The world is better off, even because of innovation. We have to be very careful about if we are making innovation available to these poor countries. Sometimes it takes time, for example a lot of these cancer treatments are very expensive and can't be accessed in the poor countries. But there are lots of things like dealing with high blood pressure that now we're rolling out, which was only available because the drugs were expensive and you had to have a doctor and the instruments were expensive. Now, that's gotten so inexpensive that we have a partner rolling that out even in the poorest countries to check blood pressure and help treat your blood pressure, which causes a lot of deaths.

If we're intentional about it, we can make sure innovation is pro-equity. The greatest inequity of technology is that climate change was caused by the middle-income and rich countries, but the suffering, overwhelmingly, is the poor countries. We do have to solve that very, very hard problem, or else it is a case where innovation reduced equity.

-END-

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