Bill Gates

Bitcoin is an exciting new technology. For our Foundation work we are doing digital currency to help the poor get banking services. We don't use bitcoin specifically for two reasons. One is that the poor shouldn't have a currency whose value goes up and down a lot compared to their local currency. Second is that if a mistake is made in who you pay then you need to be able to reverse it so anonymity wouldn't work.

Overall financial transactions will get cheaper using the work we do and Bitcoin related approaches.

Making sure that it doesn't help terrorists is a challenge for all new technology.

The currency work we are doing is attributed to a person like a credit card is unlike currency or bitcoin. This has some pluses and minuses but for the poor we think it is the right approach since they can reverse mistakes. Anonymity does allow bad guys to be less visible.

We are far closer to getting these digital currencies into the poor countries. It was a year of great progress. We are hoping to have India and Nigeria going in the next 2 years if things go well. Kenya and Tanzania and Bangladesh have grown a lot although those systems still need some improvements.

I feel pretty stupid that I don't know any foreign languages. I took Latin and Greek in High School and got A's and I guess it helps my vocabulary but I wish I knew French or Arabic or Chinese. I keep hoping to get time to study one of these - probably French because it is the easiest. I did Duolingo for awhile but didn't keep it up. Mark Zuckerberg amazingly learned Mandarin and did a Q&A with Chinese students - incredible.

Technology is not making people less intelligent. If you just look at the complexity people like in Entertainment you can see a big change over my lifetime. Technology is letting people get their questions answered better so they stay more curious. It makes it easier to know a lot of topics which turns out to be pretty important to contribute to solving complex problems.

Research is very underfunded compared to the ideal. Society captures so much benefit from innovation that inventors don't so there is not enough risk taking. Government (and Foundation) funding of research helps but it still should be more. The United States funds a lot more than any other country even relative to its success. It should do more medical and energy and educational and other research. Politicians often think short term unless the voters tell them to avoid that. Perhaps the most outrageous thing is we have not raised Energy research funding to help solve climate change!

Government aid funding from rich countries to develop new seeds and help the countries educate their farmers and provide credit to them can make a huge difference. Canada does some of this like the United States. We need to raise African productivity by 1.5 to 2x in order for them to avoid malnutrition and be able to lift themselves out of poverty. It is strange a continent with 70% adults as farmers imports food from countries like the US with 2% farmers. Africa spends $50B net buying food today. With productivity improvement they can offset the weather getting worse and feed their children enough to thrive.  

EDIT: You can read our letter here: www.gatesletter.com

Vaccines make the top of the list. Being able to grow up healthy is the most basic thing. So many kids get infectious diseases and don't develop mentally and physically. I was in Berlin yesterday helping raise $7.5B for vaccines for kids in poor countries. We barely made it but we did which is so exciting to me!

We have two dogs. One is Oreo and the other is Nilla. I will say I spend less time with the dogs than the kids do but I really like them (when they are not barking at night and not eating things they are not supposed to and when they are well house trained). I have resisted getting a third dog.  

EDIT: Here's a photo: http://i.imgur.com/oKUbosZ.jpg

There will be more progress in the next 30 years than ever. Even in the next 10 problems like vision and speech understanding and translation will be very good. Mechanical robot tasks like picking fruit or moving a hospital patient will be solved. Once computers/robots get to a level of capability where seeing and moving is easy for them then they will be used very extensively.

One project I am working on with Microsoft is the Personal Agent which will remember everything and help you go back and find things and help you pick what things to pay attention to. The idea that you have to find applications and pick them and they each are trying to tell you what is new is just not the efficient model - the agent will help solve this. It will work across all your devices.

I would probably be a researcher on AI. When I started Microsoft I was worried I would miss the chance to do basic work in that field.

Sauce. Lots of sauce. I always spill a bit so I avoid BBQ before TV appearances.

Nathan Myhrvold has some amazing modern cuisine stuff that is super tasty. I am not a foodie but his new concoctions are amazing.

I also like Thai and Indian food but it doesn't have to be expensive.

So far we have not being able to use technology to connect people to the needs of the poorest in countries that are far away to tap into their empathy. I think this can be done but it needs some missing creativity.

I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned.

There are a lot of great causes. It is important not to be frozen trying to pick since it is important to specialize and really learn the area you are trying to help. We picked health inequity as our global thing and educational inequity as our national thing and most of our projects fit into these areas. Part of the beauty of philanthropy is the diversity of causes and approaches that get tried. It is far more risk oriented than government or private sector spending which makes it special when it is done right.

It is safe for now! It is also a lot of fun and helps shape your thinking on all issues to be more logical. There is a prospect for change in this area for the next generation but that is true for most fields and understanding how to program will always be useful.

It is quite a coincidence but my gift arrived this morning. I got three cool things - a great quilt that a group of people did with a Snoo on it. A great jug of maple syrup and the book The Promise of a Pencil. All very thoughtful. Last year I waited and nothing came.

EDIT: More to come soon: http://i.imgur.com/pg8ZbLQ.jpg  

EDIT 2: Reddit just let me know that I did get a gift last year: a generous donation to Heifer International, a great non-profit that helps fight poverty and hunger around the world. So, thank you /u/SailorKingCobra, my Secret Santa!

I won't have time for all of these. My book reports show up on www.gatesnotes.com

The Hololens is pretty amazing. Microsoft has put a lot into the chips and the software. It is the start of virtual reality. Making the device so you don't get dizzy or nauseous is really hard - the speed of the alignment has to be super super fast. It will take a few years of software applications being built to realize the full promise of this.

If you study programming and biology and see how the programming can help biology you will stay out on front!

Polio eradication is a big focus for me. Our last case in Africa was 6 months ago and we are hoping no more show up. It takes over a year to be sure. We still have cases in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until we get rid of it there it can spread back to other countries. Pakistan is starting to take this seriously including the army and the government. They need to do the same things that were done in Nigeria. The Taliban makes it very difficult. They have killed women going to vaccinate kids many times.

Sewage is a problem. Since it costs money to process it just gets dumped in slums in poor countries. The system the rich world uses of pumping in clean water and pumping it to a processing plant is too expensive. I challenged engineers to create a processor of sewage where the costs could be covered by the energy and water (clean water) that it outputs. We have made progress on that. One team, Janicki, which was written up in Wired, is send a prototype machine to Senegal later this year. Getting rid of sewage helps a lot to reduce disease and improve living conditions.  

EDIT: Speaking of the OmniProcessor. You inspired me to post a photo over in /r/photoshopbattles. Have a look: http://www.reddit.com/r/photoshopbattles/comments/2tzqlh/psbattle_drinking_poop_water/

Right now there isn't enough R&D going into safe and cheap nuclear energy. I am supporting Terrapower which has a 4th generation design that looks good. It doesn't use Thorium - it uses the 97% of Uranium that normally can't be used for a reactor by breeding and burning. This means fuel will always be cheap. There are a lot of innovations but the key one is that it is far far safer than anything today - not relying on human operators.

The timeframe is longer than I would like. Probably 5 years before we have hundreds of them out in dozens of cities but we can scale up fast after that.

Fortunately as people get healthy they choose to have less kids. We have already had the maximum number of births - that number is starting to go down. We still need to help provide health and contraception in poor countries but all of the global population growth is coming from people living longer. Hans Rosling talks about this in the clearest way at http://vimeo.com/79878808

This is an easy question. I am good friends with Paul Allen who owns the Seahawks and I live in Seattle. The playoff game was amazing to watch. Go Seahawks!

Butter? Peanut butter? Cheese spread?

Any of these.

We have some tough scientific challenges like an HIV cure.

However the toughest thing is helping teachers learn from the best teachers. There are great teachers and the kids who get them are lucky. We should be able to spread those skills but the current system doesn't do it very well.

Don't stay up too late even if the book is really exciting. You will regret it in the morning. I am still working on this problem.

It seems pretty egocentric while we still have malaria and TB for rich people to fund things so they can live longer. It would be nice to live longer though I admit.

I am pretty basic when it comes to clothes and food. My big splurge is having a plane to fly around in.

I play tennis so I invest in shoes and racquets to help but they don't make a big difference.

A shorter chair every decade I am afraid.

According to one test we just ran at the office, I’m getting a download speed of 65.96 Mbps and uploading at 12.41 Mbps.