Microsoft founder Bill Gates talks tech and the Big Four
When Bill Gates takes a break from trying to save the world, he returns to Microsoft and the promise of technology.
“I give about 15 per cent of my time to Microsoft,” says Bill Gates, in an exclusive interview with The Deal in his office overlooking the water in Seattle, “on research, strategy, product strategy; how do we evolve Office, how do we use artificial intelligence? So I’m working a lot with [Microsoft CEO] Satya [Nadella] and the product leaders who work with Satya about ‘yes, let’s be super ambitious, let’s drive this stuff forward’.”
Throughout his 62 years, Gates has never been accused of being anything other that super ambitious in all he does. From technology to business to philanthropy, he has a hunger to learn that remains undimmed by his amassing a $US86 billion fortune that makes him the world’s second-richest man behind Amazon chief Jeff Bezos.
The shelves in his office are crammed with books attesting to his wandering mind. There is a section devoted to global health trends, to pandemics, diseases, cures, and of course, philanthropy. Another covers US and global politics, especially China, another is full of the classics of literature, and still more space is dedicated to tomes on computers, the brain and the future.
While his main job is running the massive Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest charitable body, Gates remains intrigued not only by the future of technology but by the genie that has been unlocked by the world’s new tech giants.
The rise and rise of the so-called “big four” – Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook – has transformed the way we live and work in a way that Gates himself did with Microsoft’s personal computer revolution in the 1980s and 1990s.
“The tech companies, in terms of impact – it’s phenomenal to see that vision that software and internet services would be a huge deal is largely coming true,” he says.
Microsoft, with a market value of $700 billion, remains a part of this club and is often described as the fifth of the tech giants. Gates still holds a 1.3 per cent stake in the company. As its founder, he is watching with interest a growing global backlash – dubbed by many the “tech lash” – and debate about the size, dominance and influence of the tech giants.
‘Absolutely people should be debating these tech giants, whether it’s privacy or how people consume the news, or hate speech. I don’t think there is too much talk about it.’
Gates has been here before. The rise and rise of Microsoft in the ’80s and ’90s led to an anti-trust showdown with the US government in 2001 amid claims the company had become a monopoly that engaged in anti-competitive practices. Seventeen years later, Gates is watching on as the new generation of tech giants gets hit with similar claims and more.
Amazon has been accused of destroying bricks and mortar retailers with its online shopping platform, Facebook has apologised for allowing fake news and Russian propaganda on its sites, and Apple and Google face accusations of monopoly abuse, among other claims.
Gates believes the transformative benefits of these companies for our lives is overwhelmingly positive, but he agrees there needs to be a debate and there needs to be scrutiny of this new era of Big Tech.
“Absolutely people should be debating these tech giants,” he says, “whether it’s privacy or how people consume the news, or hate speech. They’d be crazy not to be talking about the government policies that touch on the services that these companies offer. When it comes to competition, they should be looking – do they feel it’s healthy and all that. So I don’t think that there is too much talk about it.’
Gates cites Franklin Foer’s World Without Mind: The existential threat of big tech (2017), which offers a dark vision of the way the tech giants are trampling on privacy and pushing us towards the automation and homogenisation of social, political and intellectual life. “There was a book, World Without Mind, where the guy really didn’t get into the key issues all that much, but it’s good that it’s debated,” he says. “All these (tech) companies are trying to be largely beneficial, but governments are there to check in terms of each policy in each country what the rules of the road are.”
‘You certainly wouldn’t want to run the clock backwards and have less productivity .’
As far as Gates’ work with Microsoft is concerned, there are few rules of the road. As the founder, he has the freedom to roam across the business and to suggest ideas and innovations, even though there is no longer an obligation for the company to take them up. His penchant for looking beyond the horizon sees him increasingly intrigued with the potential of the world of artificial intelligence, a topic that still divides some of the world greatest thinkers and innovators.
World-renowned physicist Steven Hawking and billionaire investor and entrepreneur Elon Musk have warned that AI may one day be able to destroy our civilisation. “Success in creating effective AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation,” says Hawking. “Or the worst. We just don’t know.” Musk, head of Telsa and SpaceX, believes AI poses “a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation” because robots may one day be able to do everything better than humans.
Two years ago, Gates was also wary of AI. “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence,” he said in January 2015. “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.”
But as he has looked more closely at the issue, he has become an optimist, believing that AI could be harnessed as a force for good rather than evil.
“It’s like a lot of new technology,” he says. “You know, is it good that we embraced cell phones? On balance, yes. Are there ways that they’re used in terms of how people consume their news or how kids socialise with each other, are there things there that we need to be careful about?
‘If AI helps us to cure cancer or find new malaria drugs, that’s pretty non-controversial.’
“AI is very similar in that it’s going to raise productivity. And so if AI helps us to cure cancer or find new malaria drugs, that’s pretty non-controversial.”
He says progress in AI will see machines doing more people’s jobs, but says that can also be harnessed for good.
“In a sense you could say that’s good news. It means you’re able to make the goods and services with fewer people. And if you really free up people, and governments are enlightened about it, if those people go into reducing class size and helping old people and helping special needs kids, having an extra human resource if it’s properly allocated is a big win.”
Gates says the alternative is to retreat and accept a less productive and forward-looking world, something he could never condone. “You certainly wouldn’t want to run the clock backwards and have less productivity and say ‘oh, this is great, we all get to farm again, nobody has to worry about unemployment, we’re just trying to get barely enough to eat’. So time and innovation has been largely beneficial.”
He is still passionate about innovation and leadership. A year ago, after meeting with the then incoming president Donald Trump, he said he hoped Trump would “organise things, get rid of regulatory barriers and have American leadership through innovation”. A year on, Gates says it is “complicated” to assess Trump’s performance so far as president.
“Well it is a very complicated thing, because some of the things about strong relationships with other countries, he has kind of thrown up the traditional approach in terms of trade and even mutual cooperation through the UN.”
‘You do have to worry that people take the rhetoric around America First and interpret that to say, ‘okay, we don’t need to stop pandemics’.
Gates hopes Trump’s “America First” approach does not translate into an insular approach to the world’s problems, a move that would go against everything his Foundation stands for.
“You do have to worry that people take the rhetoric around America First and interpret that to say, ‘okay, we don’t need to stop pandemics in other countries, we don’t need to help create stability in those countries’. So it’s a very political situation in the America First context – will the things we think are important about stopping pandemics, raising agricultural productivity, will those things continue?”
“Some things, some leading indicators, are clearly worrisome, like pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, because African farmers are the ones who already to some degree and increasingly will be bearing the brunt of climate change. That’s something we wish hadn’t happened.”
One of Gates’ many quests is to encourage today’s new crop of billionaires to follow his lead in giving away their wealth for good causes. He has pledged to give away 99 per cent of his during his lifetime, with the Gates Foundation currently handing out more than $US5 billion a year to charitable causes.
In 2010, Gates and fellow US billionaire Warren Buffett formed the Giving Pledge, a campaign to encourage wealthy people to give at least half of their net worth to philanthropy. The group now has a remarkable 158 members ,and Gates is happy that a new crop of billionaires, from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to Elon Musk and even Australia’s Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest are among the signatories.
“I know Andrew (Forrest) very well. Andrew has been a great philanthropist, a super-energetic guy. He came to me and talked about how you could make it clear to people [about modern-day slavery] and we brainstormed about, hey, could you really measure it, and he came up with the index [to rank countries based on the prevalence of slavery].”
‘It’s very appropriate that a reasonable percentage of those people commit a high percentage of money to philanthropic things.’
Gates hopes today’s new wave of billionaires, many created by the tech revolution, will underpin America’s rich history of private philanthropy. “The US has a history of quite a bit of philanthropy. The most famous are from the turn of the century – Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford Foundation. Those are the three giants.
“There is a new wave, that as you are seeing large fortunes created, it’s very appropriate that a reasonable percentage of those people commit a high percentage of that money to various philanthropic things.”
Gates last month called for Australia to become the regional champion of a historic drive to completely eradicate malaria from Asia within 10 years. The Turnbull Government is backing the push as a part of Gates’ ambition to help eradicate the disease worldwide by 2040.
He likes Australia and has visited at least a dozen times. Last year, he travelled to central Queensland to see how digital agriculture is being used to raise local cattle and how it might be applied in places such as Africa.
“I love going to Australia,” he says. “”Last Fall, Melinda and I were bicycling around Melbourne and I was saying to her, hey, we’ve got to come to the Australian (tennis) Open at some point.”
Such is the speed and scale of Gates’ philanthropy – his Foundation has given away $US28 billion since 2007 – that he is no longer the world’s richest man. He was eclipsed last year by Amazon’s Bezos, but he doesn’t care.
“The reason I’m not the world’s richest man is because I’ve given money away – I will be getting less and less rich all the time,” he says, smiling.
“We’ve gotten great impact from the money we’ve given, and we’re going to keep on doing it, so I’ll go lower and lower... it’s great fun.”
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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