[Music] n I'm not going to ask you anything generic or anything I've heard you answer already uh I'm going to be a little selfish and ask you questions that uh I try to answer for myself a lot of the time maybe like you know uh there's no better person to learn [Music] from so we do this once in a month Bill and uh we primarily cater to to the young entrepreneur in India uh the idea is to get really good people on the show and help a young 20-year-old boy or girl in India who's looking to become an entrepreneur give them uh advice guidance help them learn from what you might have learned already I've met Bill a bunch of times I think the very first time I met you was uh when I caught you at we and bugged you for an hour with random questions a few years ago I joined Bill's bch last year thank uh the one thing I want to clarify is a lot of Indians when they hear about a Indian sign on to the pledge I think there's four of us right we're all from Bangalore and all of us are friends uh people somehow assume that the money is going out of India the money which is going to make Society better uh it's actually not the case and uh I would also like to say I think the Gates Foundation who I work worked with in the past we've done a school project together we're doing something around malnutrition together I think the impact and the effort that they're putting into India in improving Society uh is is uh is great and I hope you guys continue this association with India for a long time do you want to talk a little bit about your relationship with India and how it's evolved over the last many years well I've been I've had a fantastic relationship with India starting with the the Microsoft experience where and we hired some very smart I graduates brought them to cattle later they go back uh create a development center for us uh that's now in four locations 25,000 people and of course a lot of the amazing people I work with and have so much fun uh in the Microsoft success with are part of the team who had hired from India you know top of that list is SAA uh who know uh is doing a great job of CEO so in my digital first career uh the connection to India was uh fun and made a huge difference um in what the company was able to achieve it was during that time that I was kind of learning oh wow India is such a study and contrast you know you know first class in so many ways but still a lot of poverty uh and challenges and uh you know I was beginning to think okay how do I give this money back uh together with u Melinda and so she came over as we were starting to do foundation work um I start the foundation I fund it in the year 2000 so I'm 45 years old and still um full-time I stayed full-time for another uh eight years uh but IND you become comes you know an important place for us because we realize that vaccines uh were this missing uh thing and it was a crime that these uh diarrhea rotavirus vaccines were getting to the rich kids so you know I get to know serum I learn about making cheap uh vaccines uh you know the Indian government at the time had not adopted new vaccines for a long time you know so uh how do we is foreigners uh form Partnerships and not come across uh in the wrong way so it's a heck of a learning curve uh another big program we had here at the start called avahan uh was about making sure that the HIV epidemic didn't explode you know by making sure that um the sex workers were insisting on conomus and so that the the numbers would stay small and that was also quite successful and very much a partnership with the government um you know other than the US this is the country we spend the most money in uh we have a fantastic team of people here do you want to put a number to that in terms of the scale of how much the foundation does in India yeah we do uh if you take direct and indirect uh it'd be close to a billion a year you know we help buy vaccines through uh gavi we uh fund a lot of different things our foundation is about 9 billion a year and our health is our biggest agriculture is our second biggest education uh although super important uh it's not uh super high percentage because we're so specialized on the health stuff uh and we've had so much uh progress on that we want to uh make sure we do that super well I'm not going to ask you anything generic or anything I've heard you answer already uh I'm going to be a little selfish and ask you questions that uh I try to answer for myself a lot of the time maybe like you know uh there's no better person to learn from when it comes to uh Society at large a lot of really wealthy people today uh are virtue signaling in the manner that being wealthy is a Bad Thing somehow it it it's starting to seem like the class and race divides of yesterday has become the new uh wealth divide has become that thing in society today uh which is very socialist in the very thinking of it inherently socialist when people think of it that way and when I go on my own path of philanthropy I often ask myself like even at the pledge I find myself asking this question does philanthropy in that sense truly makes sense and me as a 37y old who's starting on this path how do I think about this well there are some things that only philanthropy can do because they require taking risks and you know the basic needs of the people the safety net that's not really the role of philanthropy because you need to count on that year in and year out and the government you know through the political process needs to decide that and of course the market-based system is where most of this wealth comes from and anything the market can do you know like how many restaurants like this should we have you know the market does that so well but we know there are diseases and challenges that either the government's not Innovative enough or the market opportuni is not enough that the two big actors you know private sector you know which is like you know 70% of the economy and you know the government which is like 28% this third sector which is only a few percent can step in to do when we had uh Democratic capitalism there was always this concern that the poorest would kind of overtax the Rich and that the incentive system would be broken down in fact you know that really hasn't happened you you have in northern Europe very high tax rates but even there the incentive system works so I think it's it's important to separate out is my country's tax system as Progressive as it should be uh so when you look at billionaires you know do they kind of have more than they should and then if you look at whatever the billionaires have o left over after they paid their taxes are they engaging in thoughtful uh philanthropy are they kind of spoiling their children uh who are kind of arrogant to view themselves in a class of Their Own uh and being kind of extravagant in what they do and that's very hard you know to draw the line what is uh that responsibility even with the giving pledge this idea give back half you know some people say well half if you have you know $4 billion dollar that means for your own consumption and your your family you're keeping two billion well it's not a upper bound we'll have you know people who will give away 99% but it and it's great to debate these things because um you know we're not trying to take over government functions we couldn't possibly afford afford to do that uh but a lot of the best government programs if you look into them some philanthropist funded the pilot you know brought together talented people and often you're using the same skills that you cause you to be able to be successful and now using it on behalf of of equality you know how do you design a school or take AI technology into a a farmer's advisory system uh and that that experience that sense of urgency uh can be very helpful in philanthropic Innovation I'm I'm with you when you say that the anomalies of capitalism the billionaires on the very end should be taxed higher but if you had to redesign societ do you think capitalism over socialism any day well capitalism gives you the freedom to start a new business and try out a new product and the idea of okay who do people choose to buy from that's a form of freedom because it's not based on your background or your class or something like that and so the discovery power of the capitalistic Market to oh this guy knows how to do this cheaper this guy knows how to do this better oh you know people are interested in that kind of a movie um you know tops down systems even though with lots of Digital Data you could run a tops down syst system less ineptly than say the Soviets or the North Koreans did but still the discovery process and the price comparison that takes place there's it is it is the fundamental way things should be done but government has to look for monopolies it has to create the safety net you know you can argue about the relative role of the government in education and and health care but they need to make sure that uh everybody gets those Services right you're looking fitter than I remember seeing you the last yeah I know I've been playing more tennis a little more pickle ball uh it's because really picking up that much it is in India in North America it's unbelievable particularly California Florida I mean it's actually more people play Pickleball now than play tennis right uh so it's actually passed it by uh the last time we met I kept bugging you about what supplements do you take now that you've gotten even healthier looking is there any hack that you would like to recommend to young entrepreneurs I take vitamins you know because it's there's no downside so getting blood tests every once in a while and seeing if there's anomalies uh that's good and now there's a thing called The Grail test um it's not covered by all Insurance in the US so probably not by much in India but if you can afford it uh that is almost magical at helping to see cancers way before other techniques would catch those uh so we have a foundation bill which does work around climate it's called rain matter uh just for the sake of not having this debate publicly let's between us assume climate change is real uh I've heard you speak about uh the Breakthrough energy fund energy transition appears to be a big opportunity for young entrepreneurs to work in over the next decade are there any sub facets of that if I were a 22-year-old boy or girl wanting to to build a career in energy transition uh where do you think there are most Tailwinds what factor should I focus on well because the sources of emissions are so Broad and know we need deep innovation in many many areas so for electricity generation you know we've got to make solar cells better we have to make off- win cheaper um there's probably something dramatic that can happen in nuclear fision uh hopefully something dramatic that can happen happen in nuclear fusion uh in the long run that may be uh the cheapest source of electricity now we have some companies uh trying to get there you know over in the agricultural space um rice uh is a huge source of emissions and there's new ideas about genetics and direct seaing with house you can vaccinate them change the genetics uh in the industrial side you can try to get cheap green hydrogen or you can try and change the process for example steel instead of using a form of coal uh you could use electricity for the reduction and so I'd say there's probably 20 areas that if you want to help in climate Innovation uh these things are are begging uh and I think it will be startups and of course they'll have tie-ups with big companies but the open-mindedness most these breakthroughs won't come straight out of the big companies is there a starting point though let's assume I have no Capital at hand and I'm 22 starting off in Bangalore uh how do I how do I go about attempting to be a part of the energy transition solution the ideal is actually to find a philanthropist um breakthrough energy has a fellows program where we look for people with really uh good early stage ideas and we do that as a grant uh with a little bit of of options but you don't need a business plan then if you get past that stage either on your own or with the uh fellas type Grant then there are Venture Capital groups that really specialize in finding Climate Technologies and they're willing to fund very risky stuff um and I know all of them including breakthrough energy are like gosh are we missing some in India and so now there's a network you know if you have a good idea you know if you pass it to me if non-one pass it to me there's a bunch of us Venture Capal and hopefully some who would also come in domestically uh so for risk Capital uh this is a very good time if you have something that that looks attractive could have a significant impact artificial general intelligence uh you know more about this than most people how do you think Society changes if you could paint a dystopian and a utopian picture let's say there is Agi what happens to the society post AGI from a jobs what is money what is societ what is family standpoint well the amazing thing about this technology is um we know it can help uh in key areas we know it can create like educational tutors lot of great pilot work uh several projects here in India Salon in the US is the one that um may have started the 1 and is is uh showing great results on that so the potential is incredible and if if we knew that all it did was make a lot of jobs say three times more productive so doctors are three times more productive so you know the demand for more people to see doctors and get good advice that's probably good for software um you know we'll still need those software Engineers well we may take some of the extra productivity for Quality some for quantity but we're not going to um you know start uh not not needing software Engineers the fact that over time and we don't know the the rate of improvement um and there doesn't seem to be an upper bound if it gets so that it's a complete replacement that it can do all the medical advice or it can do all the coding that's a world of excess where you know it's it's got to be wonderful in the sense that you know handicap people old people you're you know taking care of them you're shortening the the work week but you can get to a point where the very organizing principles of society uh and the whole philosophy about you know what you value um that world of excess which I personally think won't come in the next 20 years but I can't guarantee that you know I was personally not expecting this reading writing breakthrough to take place just because you know gpt3 got scaled up to gp4 but that really showed something profound in knowledge representation uh had taken place and so most of us are working on the hey let's go build that tutor and that Health advisor and farmer adviser um but while we do that we should be aware that okay so so much extra productivity will uh surprise people and require us to rethink uh about a lot of different things so when Sam Alman was in India he fielded a bunch of questions around chat jpt and uh generative AI per se when these large language models take as much computational power as they require an Indian entrepreneur who has lesser access to Capital compared to a western one how does an Indian entrepreneur compete with the West in this domain without the same kind of access you know that's a very good question so if you're an entrepreneur who's trying to build foundational models models from the very ground up like Google does or Microsoft with opening eye does and they have four five others you have to raise you know two three billion dollars uh now maybe some government will decide because you're domestic they'll help you do that or provide some of that but there should either be like zero one or two cases where an Indian company goes after that very base level uh and hopefully focuses on some specific Indian applications of that uh most of the opportunity is at the level above you know where you're saying okay let's take this and help Architects or let's take this and help this group of farmers or you know the Indian legal system is very different believe me what legal things are done for the US won't apply here but you know just imagine if you could make everybody the legal system four times more productive you know that changes Justice because right now the backlog uh is kind of nightmarish um and and here you know comes potential solution so I'd say there's a thousand opportunities where you you're you Pi either pick or just use one of those base level models but you're doing the extra data value added user interface to go after a particular application that I think will is where we'll see the most activity uh if somebody's bold enough to say no I'm going after foundational piece you know Screw you Bill Gates you don't know I say hey good for you you know I I could be wrong we are in you know this is all very new uh stop are there any arbitrages in place like a unique Advantage India either by virtue of population or the demographic diversity has that that will help a young entrepreneur focus on a particular facet around building this um or is there a legal Arbitrage is regulation better here than that I think it's very possible that the health advice piece that the US will over regulate that and uh you know just see the the risk and not not the benefit and that middle income countries and I put India at the top of the list will engage in a dialogue and and drive very aggressively to get the benefit but yes I would expect uh definitely in Health definitely in agriculture a lot of the most exciting fast-moving things uh will be here in India education I think everybody's going to be doing it and and including India I've seen this happen in Indonesia do you think the business of delivering medical advice and prescribing people uh not with the human on the other side but a model per se do you think the potential for that is big in India for young entrepreneurs to focus on yes um you know there's going to be a quality bar uh and and yes and you know maybe at first it's okay pregnant women or people dealing with diabetes um because it's easier than to think through all the possible questions and make sure the quality is right but eventually you bet your your lifelong medical agent that takes all your sensor data and you know how you felt you know when you eat this or drink that uh it'll be there and it'll be reading the latest literature um and it'll be super helpful to you okay last question to you Bill if you were 25 years old living in India uh no no crazy skill set at hand and about $100,000 of money to start a business with what would you do today I'd probably build pick some AI thing and just use the Google Microsoft platforms and and go on top of that and try and because I'd be in touch with the customer so well and improving my data keep ahead um you know and I'd say okay who's the most demanding customer for this uh and go after that it might be fun you know like clearing legal backlogs you know that one kind of fast fascinates me uh because it it's a mechanism that helps all uh business activity um I'd Envy the guys who get to work on the foundation models I'd say damn uh even I sort of Envy them because when I was young I thought gosh you know when is AI really going to make the Breakthrough it took a lot longer uh than I expected I'm glad now I get to play a supportive uh role help shape it a bit s uh engages me and now you know we're using AI in our foundation work and whether it's drug Discovery or all these things uh so we can be way more ambitious than we were before it came along I happened to meet Satya and Sund when I was in the US and uh we were having dinner at a certain place together and these guys seem to talk about AG AGI in a very precocious manner like it's much closer than anybody is thinking it is do you think that there there could be one day when suddenly we are surprised like a couple of years down the line and there's so much there's not really a really good definition these models already today when you have lots of lots of documents you know more than a human could read in lifetime it is able to find things and reason across these documents in a superhuman way and so when you think about a lawsuit or a drug filing you anything that gets to be over say 10,000 Pages human cognition even a great specialist person you got 10,000 pages I dare you uh and these things it's not just keyword search this is semantic representation of that level of complexity so we're already superhuman in a dimension that is kind of surprising I mean I thought robots you know would be taking over the warehouse you know 10 years before they'd be studying our legal and Regulatory documents and we know that we have Brute Force scale up we have a lot of external algorithms you know to help the AI know how hard to work I mean most people don't realize today it works exactly the same amount where it puts out the next word is and it doesn't think in advance it doesn't think okay I have to write this poem let me figure it all out no it it it it's generating word by word and so getting it to go faster when it's easy or take more time like math problems you know we we all laugh because it's actually quite bad at certain type of recursive math things like Sudoku puzzles which are trivial uh in fact if you say to the AI put this into algebraic form and then give it to a tiny little solver it's perfect but its current algorithm is this single linear pass print the most probable token single and so there's a lot of control architecture work that's been played around with to deal with these quality issues you know clearly humans we think okay for this problem it's just a joke blurt something out uh they're asking me for medical advice advice or marriage advice I better you know really um think through the implications and and so the control system uh as well as the the extra scale is going to drive improvements at you know some rate that could be quite rapid right no thank you so much bill for having taken the time with me today and uh look forward to seeing you in May Califoria thank you [Music] hi guys we are in there today I'm trying to fruit a new a very interesting guest and uh we're going to do something fun what else we have for what else what else we have for did you know that your [Music] baby save us actually being serious did you know that your baby would something this is our beautiful beautiful venue we have Mark that Sheldon everyone's setting up lights this is where everyone's going to be sitting we're going to have a live screen monitor here which I'll probably be looking at a boom broad mic and that's what we're going to place on top of the two sers hi Chan this the first time we working together what are your thoughts you don't look stressed at [Music] all that's called a skimo that we're going to put over the guest that's our spot and that's how big the schemmer is I'm also worried about other things so let's see then how it looks and then take a b we're going to change the rose it doesn't look so nice does it [Music] is that okay yeah that was [Music] fantastic how does it feel good little bit a little bit more H say something wait