A Q&A Audience With Bill Gates

good evening and welcome to QA and the Sir John Clancy auditorium at the University of New South Wales I'm Tony Jones answering your questions tonight the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Bill Gates please welcome our guest thank you the boss mr. gates is only in Australia for 14 hours tonight's program is the first ever pre-recorded Q&A as usual it's being simulcast on ABC News 24 and though we won't be able to answer your Twitter questions we would like to see your Twitter comments published on the screen so please join the Twitter conversation now with the quando hashtag well Bill Gates is the world's most generous philanthropist he made billions as the co-founder of Microsoft the company which led the way in personal computing and changed the way that we all work and live he's now on and off for the world's richest man and he's established the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the attention of giving away most of his wealth by targeting billions of dollars at health and education projects around the world he's visiting Australia to convince Australians to continue and to expand aid program and he joins us tonight as a guest at the University of New South Wales and the Pacific Friends of the Global Fund we have an audience here of 900 students graduates and guests never got a lot of questions so let's get started our very first question tonight comes from Betty zing hello is the gate it's really exciting to meet you in person my question is um so you mentioned that your friend Warren Buffett once gave you some really great advice on our philanthropy he said don't just go for the really safe projects take on the really tough problems what would you say is your toughest project that you've faced in your foundation yes one is very clear that the role of philanthropy is to do very tough things the easy things can be solved by government or others and I'd say the the most difficult thing we work on is improving the United States education system in the idea of how do you measure teachers how do you give them feedback had it helped them develop how do you make sure there's the right incentive system around that very little has been put into that and yet if you could make the teachers significantly better the impact on and quality the impact on where the country would go would be pretty phenomenal so I'd say that's the toughest thing we work on even tougher than inventing new vaccines yet what would be the most ambitious program then because getting rid of the pol polio vaccine by 2018 is pretty huge task yeah Radek eating polio I think we have very strong hearts of succeeding on that we're down to three countries we very successful fundraising over the last several months and it's five and a half billion but we're using new tactics we've looked at where it's been challenging and we have less than 300 cases and only only three countries so I'd rate our odds as pretty good we've actually got a question in the audience on this topic it's from Gillian Thomas mr. gates polio survivors need special services because of post-polio syndrome and polio Slade affects countries rarely provide these services and survivors are ignored in Australia most of the 400,000 polio survivors are excluded from our new National Disability Insurance Scheme and polio Australia is without government funding no-one will celebrate polio eradication more than polio survivors however even after eradication there will still be millions of survivors worldwide requiring polio services for up to 80 years what strategies will government's will get governments to shoulder their responsibility and fund essential post polio services we're absolutely right that polio syndrome challenges and all sorts of disabilities are very important issues and particularly in these very poor countries they are not given a lot of attention I knew that when I held a girl named Harshman was only two years old in India who didn't really understand what it meant for her life that she was paralyzed that the likelihood of her having the full life that she deserved was was not very good hopefully we can use this polio success to raise the visibility of the the fact there's still people out there who need help but first inform we want to make sure that no one else has to go through that and that that's where we're very close and it will free up a lot of money for other health activities Gillian can I just come back to you for your response to that I mean I understand you are a polio survivor yourself I must say I'm quite shocked to hear that you're not covered by the the disability care scheme now unfortunately it's the age 65 cutoff that's going to exclude us because the polio vaccines came out about getting on for 65 years ago and I got polio five years too soon unfortunately is there a way of dealing with this issue I mean could you use the money you save once you had Radek eight the disease I think you're talking about billions of dollars in savings could that be used to help the survivors who are living on yeah well certainly you know the health funds are fungible and every country will look at what they're doing on disability and other things and you know hopefully it keeps polio in the poor Prime okay we've got a video on another extremely difficult problem on malaria it comes from Arango Moses from the oil health search Foundation in Port Moresby Papua New Guinea for the last 20 years we have been hearing that we will have a malaria vaccine within five years given the malaria has been driven from countries with good health services without the need for a vaccine how much hope and effort should be placed on the development of a vaccine or new drugs rather than strengthening health services especially when countries with a large malaria burden like Papua New Guinea have poor vaccine coverage rates and poor functioning health services okay bill we know you work with oil search in Papua New Guinea or the search relax scene is what this is about well in fact there's very little money being spent on a malaria vaccine was mind-blowing to me that when our foundation gave 40 million for malaria vaccine research we became the biggest funder in the world and whenever you have a disease that at that time was killing a million children here now because of bed nets we're down to more like 700,000 the idea that that the world can't take you know even 10% of what it spends on say a baldness drug and put it towards a malaria vaccine seem pretty stunning to me and yet the people who suffer from malaria don't have a lot of money and so their voice in the marketplace is very weak so only through government research or foundations will we pull that money together now I'm quite optimistic that we understand enough about malaria we can do what are called challenge models that will eventually come up with one and parallel that we're also coming up with better drugs and drugs that are far less expensive there's a drug that's been worked on here in Australia that will be a single dose drug and so the compliance the need to come back to the health service and take the multiple doses the side effects will be eliminated so a lot of the innovation let you do delivery even in very tough places where PNG is one of the toughest place to places to deliver health interventions okay we've got a lot of questions to get to the next one comes from Charlotte Regan how justifiable do you think it was for the federal government to blame a lack of predicted revenue for delaying their anticipated increase in foreign aid well the key thing I see is the incredibly positive impact of foreign aid if we look at how we're saving children's lives getting reproductive health tools out to women where they they choose to have less children voluntarily improving seeds so that farmers can grow enough for their kids to eat to have the nutrition to succeed at school it's phenomenal and yet because these programs are far away a lot of people don't recognize the impact of what even point five percent can do and so Australia's to be thanked for the fact that its aid budget has gone up and in a sense the sooner you get to 0.5% the bigger impact you're going to have so I was disappointed at the delay but the trend is still pointing in the right direction we've we've heard you diplomatic answer to this a few times today but I understand in truth you were pretty angry when that Australia was shirking its promise to actually do this is that true no I don't tend to get angry I don't think that's very constructive I think if people could all visit it would make a difference and that's why those who do get a chance need to come back and witness it and make people feel good about what's being done certainly the world economy is such that all these development budgets are under pressure in fact you know the deficits and debt levels in other countries are very very high yet some of them like the UK are continuing to make very significant increases moving up in their case to 0.7% and it's always significant when someone of your stature comes to persuade leaders behind closed doors now you're known as a mathematical genius given Australia's electoral math how important was it that you came to see Tony Abbott well I'm not a pollster and I saw both parties at length today but we know you can add up and so can missing the people in this room and the strong likelihood is he'll be the Prime Minister by the end of this year so I'm wondering behind closed doors did you get a commitment from him well I spoke as somebody with expertise I'm not an Australian voter so I don't get to ask for things but these are things where I've taken you know the money that I've earned and decided to put to get behind them and so whenever you have a management mentality hearing from a business type person why they think this is the very best way to spend money I think you know a little bit you realize hey it's not soft thinking it's not just that these are sad causes it's because of the real change and was he receptive to your arguments he couldn't be nicer yes okay he's a politician the next question I didn't ask him to write a check or anything perhaps next time you could alright well well the government and power did announce today an extra 80 million for polio which was absolutely phenomenal yeah thank you very much our next question comes from Dave Kennedy the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given 18 million dollars to the Kirby Institute UNSW to conduct hiv/aids research falling on from that Chuck Feeney's Foundation gave 10 million to help build new facilities for the Kirby Institute UNSW to help do that research now we are thrilled I'm thrilled as an Australian that the American billionaires are coming here and helping us with all of this medical research funds it's very difficult here malaria tuberculosis HIV but particularly for HIV AIDS and I appreciate that America and Australia have different traditions when it comes to philanthropy can you tell us how you and Melinda decided to give so much a way to folks outside of your family and why do it in your lifetimes and not in your last will and testament well Chuck Feeney who you mentioned is one of the great philanthropists of the age and I encourage everybody to look at his example he's pretty much given away 99% of his money to phenomenal things and it's it's really a great example that that both Melinda and I have learned from you know when you're lucky enough to have substantial wealth what are the possibilities you know you can build a pyramid you can have you know 400 people fan you and there's kind of a limit to consumption and so then you have to say what do you feel what are you affiliated to what really counts for you if you feel like you're a citizen of the world and you want to help all of humanity then you think where is the greatest injustice and I think a mother having to bury a child or having that child have so much sickness that they never their brain never develops so they can't learn they can't contribute in any way you know that was a trout that Melinda and I decided to learn about and see we're there some miracle intervention sort of the equivalent of the microprocessor personal computer that that could be created and so in doing that we fund scientists all over the world in fact this year we'll fund here in Australia about 40 million of science for health and agriculture and that's done strictly on a well whoever does the best work in the world is who I was going to end up getting that money and so it's a real testament to the quality of the science in Australia that a lot of that happens bill at the core of that question was another question I think and that is why Australian philanthropies aren't stepping up to the mark to Americans name there we don't hear a lot about Australian philanthropy are our billionaires too greedy well I don't think philanthropy should be promoted just you know to make people feel bad or anything I think when people see examples and they see that it can be done well and it's uncomfortable at first because it's different than making money the business you make money and you're good at you understand the metrics you've seen it at work and so when you make the transition to start giving away you feel you know very naive and of course charity it's very hard to get it right I do think plants be all over the world is on the increase I think that's true of all levels of wealth I think the idea people who do philanthropy getting together and talking about what we do well what's gone wrong I think there's some value to that we've got a global group called The Giving Pledge that is now international Andrew Forrest is a member of that I think all of that will encourage more people to come in but they should do it because they they are passionate about something because they want to be philanthropic and you know I don't think there's you can take it with you so you know what's the alternative okay let's move on our next question is from grace Dilton Dahl um hi mr. gates first off it's a great privilege to be here to be able to hear you talk today my question is that recent quotes from Pope Francis has shown that he believes that the cult of money has made a make life a misery for millions of people and that capitalism has created a tyranny as a person who is benefitted greatly from capitalism but has also used this in so many fantastic ways what would your response be to this well my response is that if you look at life over the last 200 years or 50 years or any reasonable period of time life is improved incredibly if you think about the treatment of women if you think about the treatment of gay people if you think about children dying 200 years ago 40 percent of all children died before the age of five people didn't have a chance to learn to be literate and to read books average lifespans were less than 40 years and so in a span of not too much time even compared to human history we have made unbelievable progress the things we take for granted the ability to go out and learn to have air conditioning to have clothing to have a toilet it's pretty phenomenal so anybody who looks at what capitalism does and say okay it's been a net loss versus tout like we had before I think there's some loss of perspective there I don't claim capitalism is perfect but the arrow of time in terms of human rights and the quality of living that's very clear we should we should work to make it better to deal with those imperfections but no capitalism the broad system are in which is mixed capitalism government has been a great blessing to humanity okay we've got a question on a different side of capitalism this one's from Matthew Thomas after the recent global crackdown on tax minimization schemes used by Microsoft Apple and several other firms will you change your current finance strategies and bring capital out of tax havens and back into the country to honestly pay your tax I hope I heard that I I could repeat it to you yeah I I'm one of those rare people is actually for taxes you know I paid over six billion in taxes in the United States gladly you know I feel like the the services I get from the government or extremely worthwhile and all those tech companies as far as I know in our absolutely following all the rules about taxation they are also you know fairly big tax payers so if somebody wants those companies to pay a higher percentage of profit taxes they should change the rules and make that happen I think it's great that that debates taking place but it's not incumbent on those companies to take shareholder money and pay huge amounts that aren't aren't required you really need you need to have the rules say what the what the mechanism is if you you want to make that a greater source of tax collection according to the Senate committee who are looking at this and they accused Apple of being one of the biggest tax dodgers in American history I mean according to them these tax minimization schemes are not ethical they may be legal but they're not ethical and in Microsoft's case they save 4.5 billion dollars over a couple of years and money they otherwise would have paid the taxes to pay for health and education and so on you think that's justifiable I think in a system of laws it's very important that if you follow the laws that you don't have some other second standard I mean for somebody buying shares in a company say Google or something like that do you expect them to just go and write checks or tens of billions I mean you know the people who write tax laws are the ones who should decide what things are and there shouldn't be some separate story about what's ethical as opposed to what was I cannae to look for loopholes so you pay less tax if you're a big corporation that's what they're being accused of well acute the idea that taxes the that you do on in outside the United States that's not a loophole I mean it's a well known it's a fact about the US tax system it's actually fairly unusual that we actually compute your extraterritorial allottee tax and at some point we say we'll tax it the thing that that's interesting is the European countries are going to look at this and realize that that they don't even see the extraterritoriality piece of this thing but this is not a morality play this is about the laws you know if people want taxes at certain levels great set them at those levels those companies you know will be glad to comply to any of those rules okay let's move on you're watching a special edition of qat we're talking to Bill Gates the next question comes from Anthony Liang hi Bill you named Susan Cain's the power of introverts as one of your favorite TEDTalks my question for you is how have you managed to succeed in a predominant new predominantly extroverted world and how can the education system with its increasingly extroverted ideals harness the positive features of the introverted personality I think introverts can do quite well I think there's you know if you're clever you can learn to get the benefits of being an introvert which might be say being willing to go off for a few days and think about a tough problem read everything you can push yourself very hard to think out on the edge of that area and then if you come up with something if you want to hire people get them excited build a company around that idea you better learn what extroverts do you better hire some extroverts like Steve Ballmer I would claim as an extrovert and tap in to both sets of skills in order to have a company that that thrives both is in deep thinking and building teams and and going out into the world to sell those ideas we've got a related question it comes from Alina yang mr. gates thank you for answering my questions you still lacked self-confidence and was socially awkward in your teenage years how did you eventually find a solid self identity and confidence within yourself did achieve in financial security success and fame boost your self-confidence what drives and motivates you to get up every morning and more generally how can the average person figure out their driving force in their inspiration and passion well I think having some self-confidence is different than finding your passion from a young age ideally you'll have adults in your life preferably your parents as part of that some of your teachers people around you who who like you and they're behind you and they'll back you no matter what goes on and that gives you enough confidence to go off on a quest and during that quest you try different things out if you're lucky when you're very young you find something you're passionate about I did when I was 13 years old I found computers and software it took me another five years to figure out that was my life's primary work but that's a lucky thing other people you know get out into their 20s or even later before they find what they're passionate about but proceeding with a certain set of self-confidence that there are people who care for you you care for them that you succeed in their eyes by your how you treat them I think that's that's pretty basic and it gives you the platform on which to try out new things to fail you know first you're not going to succeed in in various things so self-confidence is primary and then finding your passion is a adventure a quest that that may take time and may switch over the time time of your life but those deep relationships will let you pursue it with vigor I don't know bring us down a peg or two but is it true you spent two weeks working up the courage to invite a girl to the school prom I don't know how long it took me but she did turn me down okay next question is from Rita da mr. gates affordability of Medicine is one of the key issues facing many of the poorest people in societies across both the developing and developed worlds one of the catalysts is the long term patents issued to pharmaceutical companies that at the end of the day operate for profit as an astute businessman an innovator and a philanthropist do you believe that such mechanisms are critical to drive innovation in the field of medicine or are they simply market distorting mechanisms that help create monopolies if patents are indeed necessary or indispensable what needs to change in the system to make medicine accessible to those who needed the most well one of the amazing things that happens is that the pharmaceutical companies as we're going to them and saying hey we you know need to help out those poorest in the world they're willing to offer for these countries absolutely break even type pricing so whether it's drugs or vaccines the poorest of the world we are getting out the high volume medicines to them in fact we go to the companies and we offer to take the risk we do volume commitments and we're constantly getting those prices down we use competitive tenders and so we've gotten companies from all over the world including low-cost Indian manufacturers to come in and and get the prices down to the lowest level possible and so you you need have a system where somebody's pain enough to fund the research and the poorest in the world are getting it at a just a break-even cost and in fact we do a yearly ranking of the pharmaceutical companies called the access to medicine index that calls out the different programs of them and in general they've been moving up the ones that are lower call us up talk about how they can do better so I'd say that's an industry that's very well behaved now it doesn't mean that we've magically figured out exactly how to do the tiered pricing if you knew somebody's income level then you could do the right pricing where I would pay the most and you know so on down the line right now we largely use country boundaries as a proxy where the poorest countries get a very low price the richer countries get higher prices that's imperfect in that if you're a poor person in a rich country then you need the government to stand in for you with some sort of medical medical scheme if you're a rich person a poor country maybe you get it a better deal than you deserve but by and large the billions that are put into research are phenomenal if we think about why will health be better 20 years from now it's that that profit private sector innovation built on government-funded basic research that combination has been absolutely phenomenal in advancing medical products there has been a tremendous amount of counterfeiting of medicines by poor countries or with in poor countries to make medicines even cheaper is that legitimate well the term counterfeiting actually means making something that's inferior and that is not good counterfeit means not not the real thing in terms of being a dull turd not having enough you know the reason we get drug resistance particularly in the case of malaria is people have made drugs they're only partially powerful enough and so you you develop resistance there and so because the companies are willing to do this breakeven type pricing you really don't have to compromise you can use the generics industry the low-cost formulators and you don't have to go to what would be called the counterfeit alright a lot of tricky questions in this area here's one from rui kwan okay hello bill the bill and melinda gates foundation is separated into two entities one to give money to charities and grants the other is to invest assets to generate a profitable return problems can arise and may have already risen when the goals of the two separate entities conflict with each other each other for example if the foundation invests in a for-profit organization which actually contributes to the very problems that the foundation has been set up to address what controls have been put in place to prevent the foundation from investing in companies which undermine the underlying goal of the foundation and has the foundation ever withdrawn investments into companies which actually contribute to the inequalities of the world yeah so as the questioner said they the assets of the foundation are invested in bonds and stocks so we might own car companies or various things we have various prohibitions for example we don't own tobacco companies we don't own weapons companies there's a list of companies that were involved in Sudan that a group got together mostly universities and Austin decided okay that was a banned list that none of us would invest in we spent a lot of time looking at the so-called proxies of the companies we owned to see what sort of initiatives are on there and you know sometimes the vote against management there been a few gay rights issues that we voted against management on but we don't pretend that the nature of our investments you know in and of themselves that's the good we do for the world so for example we from time to time owned US government bonds it doesn't mean that we endorse you know every soldier in the American Army's activities that day you know we own car companies that you know we're not the ultimate court of justice we simply buy investments that are are you know properly in place by governments and then we do our good work through our our donations and so from time to time you know a car company will do something wrong or a you know bank might make a bad loan or well you had this investigation by the LA Times in 2007 which is a one of the darker moments in terms of publicity for the foundation I would say that well they suggested that you were investing me David suggested they wrote a great article why did they suggest that they wrote a brilliant they wrote saying you're investing billions in shell in Exxon and Chevron in total in total these oil companies which were blanketing the Niger Delta with pollution while at the same time and making children sick they said well at the same time you were doing your vaccine programs in the same area and they said these two things contradicted each other so did you actually change practices after that no the those oil companies are not out to make children sick and nor is you know art whether we own point one percent of them going to save any children's lives so we're in a world of cause and effect when we buy vaccines and get them out there we're into saving lives we're not into patting ourselves on the back that oh we don't own shares in in that company the most controversial thing we honor our US government bonds I mean I disagree with a lot of things US government does and so how can I own their bonds I've even owned Australian bonds I mean so no I do not endorse every action of things that I own investments in but nor we the court of justice we're not going to take our thousand people who are malaria experts TB experts and sit and you know go around and look at every loyal employee oil company employee I happen to know something about the Niger Delta situation that I don't blame them as actors at all but if the general point is that we're about to our grants and otherwise we're just a typical investor where the government's are setting the rules okay let's move on next question is from Kashia Raman I hope my voice doesn't crack now um mr. gates said a book by Thomas Lamoille illustrates that giving more aid in Africa over the course of the years do not elevate poverty instead it kept the economy crippled with government's ask me for more aid this float made a cycle of aid giving which resulted in nothing productive and it has not been used to solve the immediate nothing except solving the immediate problems and the money is not being used to make businesses sustainable in Africa what is the foundations view in this regard it's obviously a question about whether aid in Africa has had negative consequences been new analysis about that well it depends on your value system in over the last 20 years the number of children who die in Africa every year has been cut in half and you know is that good or not good it's it's largely due to vaccines and the aid programs that have been there in Africa you know I think that the that book actually did damage generosity of rich world countries you know people have excused various cutbacks because of it you read a book obviously did you actually yes did you find anything did you find anything in it of use I found that she didn't know much about aid and my aid was doing and you know she is in aid critic there's not many because it's moralistically a top position to take given what aid has been able to do but I if you look objectively what Aid has been able to do you would never accuse it of creating dependency having children not die is not creating a dependency having children not be so sick they can't go to school not having enough nutrition so their brains don't don't develop that is not a dependency that's an evil thing and books like that are there promoting evil okay let's move on that thank you our next question tonight comes from Professor Ian Frazer whose research led to the development of the HPV vaccine against survival cervical cancer yeah mr. geeks our research and your supports for vaccines programs in the developing world have encouraged us to initiate a program to help prevent control cervical cancer in Vanuatu a small Pacific island where cervical cancer happens to be the commonest cause of death amongst women Vanuatu have committed to continue the program when our funding support for that program ceases however there's clearly an expectation that the funding will continue to come from outside of the country are we doing things wrong is it morally correct to support a program which we know is going to come to an end unless their continued outside support and how can we make Vanuatu more responsible for looking after itself yeah I think before you undertake a program it is important to look at whether they'll be ongoing support for that in the case of HPV vaccine the good news is that gobby is now supporting some pilot programs where they fund the availability of HPV vaccine and with enough donor generosity they'll be able to make that a standard the same way they have for pentavalent and they're doing for rotavirus and pneumococcus in fact the next big vaccine they want to add to that list as they get the the universal coverage of those out there HPV and there's a lot of excitement now it's tricky because you have to give it a different age than the normal vaccination program but the pilot programs are to look at can you do that through the schools how do you get people together we've done pilots in in India which was actually a good thing that we learned from so I think there's some very good plans to bring the prices down and have this Gavi financing come in for the countries that want to get serious about HPV moving towards a goal that this should be universally available briefly back to NAU concerned some forms of ADA creating dependency it's not so much that they create dependency is that they create an expectation in the population that is difficult then to meet the GAVI price for the HPV vaccine is still $5 a doors and in Vanuatu which is not Gavi eligible because it does a lot of banking for Australia but still has a subsistence economy five dollars a doors is quite a lot of money I don't know the economics of Vanuatu why they can't tax the banking activity to buy a five dollar vaccine it seems like you you could do that but the price won't stay at five dollars the price you know there are different manufacturers are going to come in and bring it down sadly the prices come down partly because penetration richworld hasn't gone up as as quickly as was hoped for so there's still a lot of work to do on HPV including getting those new entrants in that we are are financing some of that okay let's move on our next question comes from Catherine Murray mr. gates some of the world's poorest countries are run by corrupt and often totalitarian leaders how do you manage to support the people without supporting the government well we believe that vaccination should take place in every country no matter what you think the leader in that country the children in that country deserve vaccines so we've even been involved in helping get vaccines into North Korea which you know it's a contest but you might think of that as the worst political leadership in the world today not not many would compete with that and so we're involved in all countries Somali where there is no government Eritrea where the government is imperfect you name it we're in there trying to get vaccine and Allisyn choices where the workers themselves have been in Dane if not some of them killed well yeah it's happy it's it's very tragic that even in the case of polio in the last six months the workers have been targeted and both in Pakistan and and in Nigerian killed now the workers have chosen to keep volunteering new security things have been put in place you know the government's really taken some very good steps but you know those are real heroes that go out get vaccines to children even in the face of threats against their life this is a particular issue with Islamist extremism in North Africa which is becoming in and Pakistan obviously which is becoming a lot worse well there's a group in Nigeria called Boko Haram and what they think about this isn't totally clear in the case of Pakistan in Afghanistan we've actually had good luck where a lot of the Taliban groups have given so-called letters of passage where they say vaccinators can come in they need to be convinced that it's not a plot by the US government and you know there were some things that confused that in terms of vaccination activities and so maintaining that fragile trust that these people are there to help your kids and that's all they're going to do it's never very easy but it's actually looking pretty good right now in Afghanistan and Pakistan okay let's move on again it looks like it's more fun next question comes from Philip Zander firstly on behalf of the international health staff and students here today I would like to be thank you for coming my question is since putting forward the condom challenge in which you are offering $100,000 startup funding to whoever creates a new condom that can protect and increase sexual pleasure have there been any designs that are fulfilling expectations and how significant do of an effect do you think the new condom might have in decreasing rates of HIV and sexually transmissible infections across the globe particularly the developing nations yeah we put out some pretty interesting challenges and I don't know the status on that one I think it still people are still sending in their things what we do is is we ask you to send in we have new toilets ways of delivering vaccines all sorts of places where we're seeking the best ideas and we ask people to send in a two-page application and in order to avoid committee thinking we send them out to reviewers and usually it'll get about twenty whichever one you think is the best that gets funded no matter what any of the other reviewers think and then you pick your three next ones and then if if that's from a poor country it's automatically funded or from if it's from a rich country it takes three people to give it their second designation so anyway it's it's been we've been able to finance a lot of pretty wild ideas how close are you to producing a better condom which produces I don't know more pleasure I'll have them get back to you on that thank you very much the next question is from Sam wood mr. gates a topic that is not yet been broached tonight but is nevertheless one that's quite important for our world at the moment is the one of our environment and you've said in the past that in order to stop global temperature rise we must cut our total carbon footprint globally to zero which would mean those in the third world must do so as well how do you propose to cut the carbon footprint of those who already have the bare minimum in terms of industrial technology which even now is not enough to properly sustain them well the key is not the co2 emissions of the third world you know if you if you think of the poorest countries they're responsible for less than five percent of the carbon emission and when I say the poorest I don't mean the middle-income I don't mean Brazil Mexico China Indonesia I mean that the seventy that that are the very poorest and so that for them it's it's such a small percentage that they should not have imposed upon them that they have to buy more expensive energy they are the ones who will suffer the most because it's actually tropical agricultural environments where the heating will cause the most starvation because of extreme crop failure and so it's incumbent on the rest of the world to get co2 emissions down and it's a very urgent thing that requires us to fund innovation to fund incentives it's a it's not an immediate problem but it's a huge problem you've got act now to make a big difference yeah there's a global fund although it's running out of money for health issues should be a global fund for environmental issues to actually help this process I don't think a new mechanisms is what's required the thing you want to do that has the longest lead time is you want to increase research in energy Rd and it's very disappointing that as people have taken money and subsidized various things that the research on things that would be very economical hasn't increased even the u.s. if you look at the balance of research and they're by far the biggest funder of energy research like many other categories the amount of deployment money has been almost ten times the research money and the research has not gone up much so I'm not sure a new mechanism is is what's required okay let's move on we have another questions from Aimee Kimball given that your charity focuses on providing better health for citizens in foreign countries does it frustrate you that underprivileged citizens in the United States don't have access to a affordable healthcare system yeah well fortunately in the u.s. less than one percent of children under five died and that that's largely to the rate happens because of a premature birth and so although we have a very inequitable situation and we should certainly move towards universal health care it's not really comparable to the situation in developing countries that is most people's most kids get enough nutrition that you don't have these this thirty to forty percent whether their brains don't fully develop so we have work to do as a country we're kind of unique in the rich countries in terms of healthcare accessibility we'd get the worst grade of all the different countries we also managed to spend more than anybody else so copying us may not be the best idea in this one area but you know I do think the policies are moving in the right direction to give better health care in fact even you know pre young people the chips coverage has gone up and the new the Obamacare thing will help with that quite a bit as I did you get involved in politics to this degree that Obamacare was hugely controversial the tea party candidates basically said this is going to destroy the American economy and certainly the American health system did you get involved in politics then well I think if you're you know rich person a lot of ideas you ought to be careful to pick a few ideas to kind of say that you know the answer and people will get tired of listening to if you think you have answers to too many things and so the areas that I really have experience or issues related to education issues related to foreign aid and so although there are exceptions I really when I'm back in Congress I try to talk to things that I'm working on full-time I know the scientists I know the numbers and rich world health care is different enough than what I've devoted my life to that I don't go in pretending to have the solution on that okay next question is from Ben Park the Australian indigenous population have a lower life expectancy of about 10 years compared to non-indigenous Australians this can be attributed to the disadvantages they face in areas of health education and employment these combined factors have led to a inter generational cycle of disadvantage for indigenous people how do you see the best way to break this cycle of disadvantage well you should you know it's interesting to think are there countries who for their indigenous population is not a good job it's another case where I wouldn't say the US has done a particularly good job we have some strange things where we let them build casinos in some cases and then they they have so much money they have the problems of having too much money and that doesn't work very broadly because the vast population of indigenous people aren't in those weird privileged circumstances so you know creating bringing them into a modern culture that requires certain things having them retain their traditional values those seem to create a bit of a paradox I don't know examples but you should study and say you know did New Zealand do it well did parts of Europe do it well you know are there any examples of this certainly it's a worthy cause in terms of resources creativity smart people are the school's fantastic in those areas you know why is the health care not living up what is it what are the diseases that our work there you know what you're describing in terms of life expectancy you know 10 years is a lot you know for a lot of countries it's more like 40 years or 50 years different but you know clearly that that should be worked on let's move on you're watching a special edition of Q and I with Bill Gates our next question comes from re-engineering in an episode of The Simpsons a character made the following quote about the future when addressing cadets the Wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield but see that will be fought in space or possibly on top of a very tall mountain in either case most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots and as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear to build and maintain those robots well while such a quote is supposed to be satirical do you think one day robots doing human tasks such as fighting wars will become reality well we already have the equivalent of robots doing a lot of things if you look at how farming was done historically and how it's done today you know those are mechanical devices that are helping us all out a lot if you look at what a telephone operator used to do or what a a typist used to do we are proceeding to replace all sorts of rote labor with robots and this is a progression that with vision with speech recognition with greater mobility will span to a lot of a lot of new areas and motivating including warfare which i think is the the point that that young man just made and indeed we have drones already these robots flying over different countries assassinating people the future according to futurologists who look at robotics could be of tiny swarms insect sized drones able to infiltrate people's houses and kill them and do you think about the future do you think about these kind of things how it might look well today we have real insects invading people's homes it's called malaria and it actually does kill people so I I have a strange obsession with the present I don't see robots is something that will lead to more war you know we have to be careful to avoid war in general the trend has been quite phenomenal in that regard violence in general particularly of that type less less genocide you know there's an unbelievable book about this by Vice Steven Pinker that really talks about the trend and how positive it's been but robots are a good thing let's just use them for something other than more next question is related to that it comes from Jessica Lee do you ever think that artificial intelligence will ever surpass the human mind and if so how would humanity handle it well be very humbling you know in certain respects computers are far faster than we are today now multiplying perfect memory and it's this wonderful auxilary tool that lets us communicate and create the ability to simulate things you know try out a new card design and see how that's going to work or a new nuclear reactor look at how you would design drugs computer simulation is this mind-blowing advance that will increase the rate of innovation and so and I do think that when the computer takes over certain tasks that'll that'll be tough for us it will be a long time before you're matching the type of broad judgment that humans exercise in in many different areas so that when you were younger you predicted this could happen that cabin base life-forms might not be unique now all your time over time the machines are going to get very smart hmm and and you know like all modern things we'll have to adjust to that it's it's kind of a embarrassment of riches problem as opposed to the the opposite that many people worry about in the future and so I do believe it's a solvable problem you know now we have to avoid climate change and other problems before we'll even have this one to worry about two of it do you think artificial intelligence is doable absolutely and how long do you think that could take hmm very hard to predict at least five times as long as Ray Kurzweil says okay the next question is from Tobias yow hi Bo thank you for answering my question my question is I was hoping to get your view on the constant use of smart devices by young people excluding Microsoft products of course and how do you teach your kids well in terms of using you know when does a kid get a phone every parent has to make that judgment you know when does the kid get to browse without you're seen their browsing history that's something you can talk with your kids about make a decision you know do your kids get to go into their rooms and and Skype with anyone in any way actually in our household there they are allowed to do that but we there's all these different judgment calls the main thing that comes off is a kid is over using the technology some game or something like that and actually for our kids that they haven't gotten to the point where we've had to set limits on it now they all said that every single classmate had phones years before we let them have phones and we said that was good good experience for them to go through so you know we're viewed as as tough parents in terms of letting the kids have stuff at a young age and then you teach them how to use it well and you know expect them to do it use it responsibly like like anything else no surprisingly it's a bit of curiosity about your family and how that works Zac Solomon has a question for us you say you don't think it's a good thing for your children to have too much money you're only giving them a small portion of your fortune of poultry ten million dollars that amount would be life-changing for most do you think that your sense of perspective has been skewed by your wealth absolutely I haven't mowed the lawn for a long time forget what it's like I do wash the dishes every night so they're you know certain rituals that are worth maintaining you know what you'd like to do is have your kids have some freedom to pick what they want to do but not so much freedom that they can't do something of importance and that's a hard balance to strike but you know I do think that having kids receive large sums of wealth actually has been more negative for them than paused particularly if their friends think that they think that you know I think a kid should grow up knowing that they're going to have to make their own way in terms of finding work and that you know they won't be giving out sums of money or just just have you know all the money they'll need you know and so far that that philosophies worked very well I presume you have the hood of that robot called the dishwasher yes doesn't matter the next question is from Andrew asks faggin of mr. gates information technology is becoming very integrated deeply into our lives and brings new levels of convenience and the cost of privacy does it worry you that this technology will be misused in the future in terms of controlling human activity yeah the as technology advances there are things like privacy which we sort of had implicitly because people weren't very good at gathering information where society will have to think more explicitly about what are the rules you know if you've had a divorce trial is that transcript generally available if you've had tickets should your neighbor be able to find out that you've had a speeding ticket if somebody's going to hire as a bus driver should they be able to find out you had a speeding ticket you know what should your credit card company know how far back should that go and these are complex questions we'll have to make sure that they're obeyed and that the tools work that way even questions like should there be lots of cameras in an urban area London's chosen to go on a directory where they have lots of cameras that's actually worked very well for them in terms of stopping crime and improving things other cities including some of us have been more reluctant to deploy that technology and so it is one of the drawbacks against a overwhelming set of positive things in terms of staying in touch learning curiosity privacy is one of the things we're going to have to make sure we draw the line in the right way and you know I think different countries will experiment with the different ways of drawing it when you get terrorists using the technology you'll tend to say okay the state should be able to see a lot then when you get periods where that's not happening then you'll tend to move towards individual privacy and hopefully we can find a way that that we achieve both you could time for one last question this one comes from Andrew Xing hi bill it's a great pleasure to meet you what are you thoughts on cryonics is it something you have personally considered as a few months ago and read it you mentioned that cheating death is on your bucket list and you're probably the most viable candidate to beat death cheating death is on your bucket list no I'd like to live a long time but I won't have myself kyra chemically preserved or cloned or anything of the kind you know life is a great thing but you got to make room for the people who come after you so I won't try and won't try and cheat death just pro delay it as long as possible well thank you very much for this hour of your life that is all we have time for a place thank I guess go thank you thank you very much and a special thanks to the Pacific Friends of the Global Fund to fight AIDS tuberculosis and malaria and everyone here at the University of New South Wales including this great audience give yourselves a round of applause you were terrific please join us next Monday for another Q & A and a regular 9:30 times thought until then goodnight you

Channel: abcqanda

Views: 274,983

Rating: 4.6647172 out of 5

Keywords: ABC, Q&A, Bill Gates, Tony Jones, Microsoft, News, Politics, Health, Tax, Robots, War, vaccines, Philanthropy, Technology

Id: Edhd9WIIpmY

Length: 59min 23sec (3563 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2013