Bill Gates

A contribution to Rotary to help end polio is a gift I would appreciate. Also any great book you have read and found interesting.

Good question. I think having parents and teachers reinforce your curiosity and explain what they are fascinated with makes a big difference. A lot of people lose their curiosity as they get older which is a shame. One thing that helps nowadays is that if you get confused about something it is easier than ever to find an article or video to make things clear.

I still find the creation of life and the way the brain works the most fascinating areas. Nick Lane has some great books exploring what we know about how life started. It is amazing how little we know about the brain still but I expect we will know a lot more in 10 years.

The big milestone is when computers can read and understand information like humans do. There is a lot of work going on in this field - Google, Microsoft, Facebook, academia,... Right now computers don't know how to represent knowledge so they can't read a text book and pass a test.

Another whole area is vaccines. We need a vaccine for HIV, Malaria and TB and I hope we have them in the next 10-15 years.

Thanks!

Overall like Warren Buffett I am optimistic about the long run. I am concerned in the short run that the huge benefits of how the US works with other countries may get lost. This includes the aid we give to Africa to help countries there get out of the poverty trap.

I am not sure if Steam here means the gaming platform or adding Arts to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. I have always been a big STEM fan but I have nothing against either STEAM.

There are so many ways to get involved - schools have mentorship and volunteering opportunities. Small gifts to things like Donors Choose have a big impact. I think most people start getting involved in local social service organizations. If you can travel to developing countries and see the needs there that is also great. It is great to start philanthropy when you are young.

In the long run the way to avoid refugee problems is to help countries develop by having good health, education and governance - fortunately the overall trend is good despite huge setbacks like Syria, South Sudan and Somalia. Unicef has a lot of good information about how to help with the current refugee challenges: http://uni.cf/2ltdjfr

Australia is particularly nice. It is summer there when it is winter here so going there in December and January is especially nice. I spent Thanksgiving there last year.

I have gotten to travel to a lot of great places like the Amazon in Brazil which I recommend.

A lot of people feel a sense of isolation. I still wonder if digital tools can help people find opportunities to get together with others - not Tinder but more like adults who want to mentor kids or hang out with each other. It is great that kids go off and pursue opportunities but when you get communities where the economy is weak and a lot of young people have left then something should be done to help.

I just went on a trip with my 17 year old son to see 6 colleges. He is a junior in High School and trying to figure out where he should go. Trips like that have been a great way to spend time together. He reads even more about politics than I do so I let him pick books for me to read.

Melinda is very creative about helping me find chances to spend time with the kids. Even just driving them to school is a great time to talk to them.

It is super important to improve our healthcare system - both to reduce chronic disease but if we don't do better health costs will squeeze out spending on all other government functions.

I agree it is surprising how tough it has been to get digital medical records right and to learn from looking at those records.

Still there are some very promising things going on. For example the idea of looking at a blood sample to find cancer very early so it can be treated. We will be able to use genomic data to tune treatments.

There are a few big problems like diabetes, obesity and neurological conditions including Alzheimer's that we really need to solve.

I sometimes wear a hat. For example when I did college tours with my son I wanted the focus to be totally on him. A lot less people recognize me when I have a hat on or else they realize I am trying to be incognito.

Mostly when people do recognize me they are super nice so I don't feel it is a burden to be noticed most of the time.

Although the Foundation work is super promising and will be the biggest thing over the decades ahead I still think the chance to be part of the software revolution empowering people was the biggest thing I have gotten to do.

Right now I am very focused on making sure we successfully eradicate polio - that will be amazing if we do it - as good as shipping even the best software product.

I will be 76 at that time. Hopefully a grandfather. The Foundation with its partners will have eradicated a number of diseases and health in poor countries will be a lot better - specifically instead of 5% of children under 5 dying it should be at 2.5% which is still a lot.

I hope I can still type fast enough to do Reddit sessions without someone transcribing for me.

This is a great question. I felt sure that allowing anyone to publish information and making it easy to find would enhance democracy and the overall quality of political debate. However the partitioning you talk about which started on cable TV and might be even stronger in the digital world is a concern. We all need to think about how to avoid this problem. It would seem strange to have to force people to look at ideas they disagree with so that probably isn't the solution. We don't want to get to where American politics partitions people into isolated groups. I am interested in anyones suggestion on how we avoid this.

One thing to make sure the people who create the first strong AI have the right values and ideally that it isn't just one group way out in front of others. I am glad to see this question being discussed. Google and others are taking it seriously.

The main "copying" that went on relative to Steve and me is that we both benefited from the work that Xerox Parc did in creating graphical interface - it wasn't just them but they did the best work. Steve hired Bob Belville, I hired Charles Simonyi. We didn't violate any IP rights Xerox had but their work showed the way that led to the Mac and Windows.

We need clean, reliable cheap energy - which we don't have. It is too bad the sun doesn't shine all the time and the wind doesn't blow all the time. The Economist had a good piece on this this week. So we need some invention - perhaps miracle batteries or super safe nuclear or making sun into gasoline directly.

No. Perhaps a small chair - a stool. I do exercise and ski but my main sport is tennis which doesn't involve jumping. Some people jump over the net but that isn't part of the sport.

I would say education is the key problem. If you can solve that then it helps with a lot of things.

Maybe I didn't understand the question - maybe it supposed to be some idiosyncratic thing that bothers me....

Good question. If you don't have a bun then it absolutely is not. If you slice the hot dog and put it on a normal piece of bread (like Burgermaster) then it is. When you use a hot dog bun then it is ambiguous.

I would explain that smartness is not single dimensional and not quite as important as I thought it was back then. I would say you might explore the developing world before you get into your forties. I wasn't very good socially back then but I am not sure there is advice that would fix that - maybe I had to be awkward and just grow up....

Warren Buffett has always said the measure is whether the people close to you are happy and love you. It is also nice to feel like you made a difference - inventing something or raising kids or helping people in need.

I hope his administration will decide that funding R&D to invent the next generation of energy (clean, cheap, reliable) is a good deal for the US and for the world. Climate change requires cooperation between countries over a period of decades but we don't have much time to waste.

Over time countries will be rich enough to do this. However we still have a lot of work that should be done - helping older people, helping kids with special needs, having more adults helping in education. Even the US isn't rich enough to allow people not to work. Some day we will be but until then things like the Earned Income Tax Credit will help increase the demand for labor.

Philanthropy is small as a part of the overall economy so it can't do things like fund health care or education for everyone. Government and the private sector are the big players so philanthropy has to be more innovative and fund pilot programs to help the other sectors. A good example is funding new medicines or charter schools where non-obvious approaches might provide the best solution.

One thing that is a challenge for our Foundation is that poor countries often have weak governance - small budgets, and the people in the ministries don't have much training. This makes it harder to get things done.

If we had more money we could do more good things - even though we are the biggest foundation we are still resource limited.

Edit: We discuss this in our annual letter this year: www.gatesletter.com

Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger.

There are so many great TV shows now I can't keep up.

I thought someone might ask specifically about Silicon Valley which I love. I can relate to Richard.

Silicon Valley captures a lot of how crazy it is to start a new company and the dynamics of success. All the employees of Pied Piper remind me of people I have known.

I love This is Us, The Crown, The Knick, Homeland, Downton Abbey, ...

I have recommended a book called Business Adventures that chronicles some big successes and failures - I learned a lot from that.

I know it’s been ages since /u/le-click began this campaign, but I finally have an answer for you. Hopefully it will be worth the wait: https://www.ageofempires.com/news/announcing-age-empires-definitive-edition/