Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, gave an interview in which he discussed several topics including the COVID-19 pandemic, India's G20 presidency, and technology. Gates commented that the world did not prepare well for the pandemic and that India was an example of how to scale up diagnostics, vaccine production, and surveillance. He expressed confidence that the world will be better prepared for future pandemics, but that there will never be certainty about the origins of COVID-19. Gates also discussed Chat GPT, a language model developed by OpenAI, and how it can be used for healthcare and education, but also acknowledged potential ethical concerns.
So it's been three years since the pandemic appended all our lives what have we learned in these last three years it's also an important year for India India's G20 presidency how does India shape the emerging Global order as it were to talk about this and a lot more issues we have one of the finest thinkers and the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation founder of Microsoft thank you very much Mr Bill Gates for speaking with us here. great to talk to you all right let's start with the pandemic it's been three years it's your first trip here to India since the pandemic broke out what have been the biggest learnings according to you in the way the world dealt with this once in a lifetime event?
well I and others uh spoke out about this risk in advance and sadly the world in general didn't do much to get ready and so you know it did go Global we had over 20 million deaths we're still going to be making up for the deaths and educational loss for a long time to come so the only good news is that uh we will take the lessons and be better prepared um what are those lessons well you know there are things that India is actually an example on it scaled up Diagnostics very quickly scaled up vaccine production our foundation has a close relationship with the vaccine manufacturers so we were able to help them move at very high speed along with the Indian government and so we we're going to have more standby capacity in the future for diagnostics for Therapeutics and and and for vaccine so that we can get that coverage a lot faster also the surveillance being able to see early what's going on that wasn't very strong and so this idea you know can you look in the sewage well that was done during covid yeah and it turns out you could see a lot of things there so what we call environmental surveillance that'll be part of the investment in being doing better next time so so you are confident that should another pandemic God forbid hit Humanity we are better prepared not just you know in how we respond but also better prepared to detect yes and if you can contain it before it spreads around the globe the benefits are really phenomenal so I think uh that will we will do a lot better next time So to that extent I'm just curious to know um are you interested in knowing how important is it to know about the origins of this because I I'm asking this in the context of the recent report you must have read in the Wall Street Journal about how the U. S department of energy believes there is material to suggest that this was a lab leak I'm just curious to know will we ever get to know what actually actually led to this once in a lifetime pandemic no well I doubt we'll ever have any certainty you know I think it was a naturally transmitted uh occurrence but you know we have to protect ourselves to make sure our labs are safe and we have to be tracking the animal reservoirs you know flu always comes across through birds or pigs and indy has a one Health Initiative which is about integrating the animal health with the human health and doing a lot of this increased surveillance which is a a great example the type of thing I'd like to see all countries do why has the world not been able to detect we've seen animal to human transfer on a number of occasions particularly increasingly so in the last 10 15 years or so from H1N1 all the way up to the pandemic cover 19. uh is is the science lacking is human sort of alertness lacking why are we not able to detect it well it you know HIV most diseases uh that are ongoing actually did come across uh the species barrier you know rabies on a regular basis is uh uh tragic disease Ebola we had a big outbreak of that uh in Africa yeah so it's hard uh and I'm impressed now that um you know you can go and you know look in the slaughterhouse go and look uh in the wild uh it's these uh sequencing techniques amazingly can see this stuff with my first exposure to that was through polio where we could actually see it it's our best tool uh you know it helped us get polio to zero here in India and it's why we think we can get Global eradication and polio where you know we're down to just two countries Afghanistan and Pakistan that still have the wild disease I want to talk a little bit about technology technology for the betterment of humankind and you've talked about chat GPT a lot um have you tried it are you excited about it how do you imagine this changing our lives yeah the leadership at Microsoft Satya and Della and open AI have engaged me uh in looking at okay how do we take advantage of this you know through my foundation work uh looking at okay how to Health Systems use this and how do education systems use this for things like a personal tutor so I'm actually quite enthused yes I'm getting to see the latest versions and uh what do you think of it have you it's amazing I mean it sometimes will surprise you that it doesn't get it right but a lot of times in its fluency of writing you know AI is up until now they could do a lot of great stuff they could recognize photos and speech but they couldn't read and they couldn't write and so that's what this gpt3 gpt4 now computers in a surprisingly good way most the time are able to read and write and many people didn't think that would happen in the fall when I was playing around with it I was saying wow this this is a very very valuable tool are you worried though that that there could be ethical ethical Dimensions to it which are various Army universities for example are suddenly rethinking this whole idea of having you know TCS and dissertations for students because they could just ask Jack GPT to fill it up for them well it's the same dilemma we had when calculators came along you know should we teach people to multiply and you know if we give them arithmetic homework are they sitting there just using their calculator and so we'll have to adjust I'd say there is definitely some good news here because most people who write an essay your teacher doesn't have that much time to comment on areas where it could be better one of the things that the AI is good at is taking a paper and giving you a lot of suggestions and I do think it's still important for people to learn how to write themselves just like I I feel about mathematics so uh let's is it going to eat up jobs because that seems to be the big concern that a lot of people have that coders will be out of fashion I mean if somebody said this to you 30 years ago you'd have been like hell what well there's many jobs where making people more productive you just apply that to higher quality or more output so uh in the health care sector you know we have so much in the way of unmet needs in the education sector you know what if we could take class size from 40 30 2010 what if you the tutor could help adjust to the level particularly the students who are behind and so the only thing that's unusual here is that the Innovation is it could be adapted very rapidly in the agricultural sector we eliminated 90 percent of the jobs but we did it over several Generations so yes uh the policies because you know when do we trust these things when do we not uh a lot of work to do there uh what is the the adjustment in the labor market governments need to get engaged because there'll be a lot of policy questions uh let's talk about I mean you've come back to India at an interesting time it's the year of India's G20 presidency even as we speak this week there is the G20 foreign Minister's meeting you'll be speaking on an event on the sidelines of it uh what are your expectations at a time when we're seeing a lot of flux around the world well the G20 will address a lot of issues the dislocations from the war in Ukraine where food prices fertilizer prices have gone up deserve a lot of visibility and you know the aid to some of the countries in Africa is going to go down while this war is going on which is very unfortunate the great thing about India leading this is that it has many examples of the digitization of the health system the digitization of the finance system this focus on foundational learning and uh I wanted other countries to see these advances in India and this forum is very well timed particularly the identity and financial systems we're seeing countries that come here say okay uh please India give us some technical assistance and then the Gates Foundation can come in with money and other experts so that we can get adoption in dozens of additional countries you know the benefits distribution that's now done digitally is way more efficient way more targeted and so every country should have that in India's uh willing to help and and share its its uh Innovation is there any particular digital Made in India product or app or anything that's impressed you well the the basic identity system is so important because it's not like one Department of the government used one identity system another used another and what they did is so well defined in terms of how you make sure you're protecting privacy uh you know so adhar is at the bottom of this but then the payment system put on top of that you know now when we want to pay the private sector for helping out with tuberculosis in India you know it's so efficient because it used that system it wouldn't work without that even you know uh OSHA workers when they do certain thing making sure they get paid really quickly and and so the applications are where you get the benefit but some great uh design work was done and you know it's one system that that almost all citizens are connected to I'm coming back to the Russia Ukraine war and obviously the the consequences of it as you outlined is food inflation there's product inflation um what may this mean for companies particularly technology companies who are talking about a China plus one strategy can India be that plus one well Indians uh as a manufacturing base uh it's a there's is a lot of interest in doing manufacture in India historically issues around land and labor regulations made it not that attractive so it will be fascinating to see you know I believe it's a great thing for the world and a great thing for India if it's a attractive alternative as a manufacturing base I'm a huge believer in free trade I don't think you know I think uh having India China and the us all three get along with each other is the best thing for Humanity and India's stepping up to a bigger role there but you don't see this this war or even otherwise even before that with Donald Trump and stuff a sort of a backlash to free trade and a backlash to globalization oh there's definitely a backlash uh I hope we preserve the things that have been fantastic about it you know the uh uh you know the I.T jobs here in India are uh in a huge favor to the country huge favor to the world uh and I would hate to see trade policies that said no you know you can't access the incredible Talent here last couple of questions uh I know you love chat GPT but is there any other technology product you're excited about that you've seen in the last couple of years which which you think is is really you know something that we should be talking about something that the world should be talking about you know people talk about uh crypto and I'm very negative I don't don't see that as as beneficial at all uh they talk about the metaverse and I do think that'll be valuable but not so revolutionary AI broadly is the big change agent and uh you know we're just realizing that when you can use natural language you know like if you want to make a drawing you just say put a barn here make it bigger you know in the past the way we connect to computers is through you know menus and very specialized things so having natural language is going to unlock the the ability to navigate uh Digital Data that is um very much at the top of my list the fact that the connectivity you know India's got great mobile phone connectivity now a lot of money going into the 5G which means that video uh both educational video or just entertainment video is going to be pervasive in a gigantic way so we always need the infrastructure but on top of that AI driven applications is the biggest change agent this was one big change which is Elon Musk taking over Twitter and I'm wondering what you think of that the change that's happened on Twitter you know elon's done such a great job at SpaceX and Tesla uh and I'd say the jury's out on will he be glad he went there will the world be glad he went there the whole issue of the craziness in these digital channels not just Twitter but all of them is a a tough problem you know instead of us all being sort of more factual and educated in some ways people are withdrawing into groups where they all you know share non-factual beliefs and uh you know I I challenge the younger generation this is one of the problems they're going to have to deal with and and I I hope they can solve it because it's uh it's a little bit scary of what that does to politics all right thank you very much Mr Bill Gates we'll leave it there thank you very much for speaking with us
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