- "India's vaccines are high quality, low cost"
- "India is leading in digital infrastructure"
Bill Gates on India's leadership in digital infrastructure, vaccine industry, Dolly Chaiwala and more, in conversation with NDTV’s Vishnu Som. #NDTVExclusive
- "India is leading in digital infrastructure"
Bill Gates on India's leadership in digital infrastructure, vaccine industry, Dolly Chaiwala and more, in conversation with NDTV’s Vishnu Som. #NDTVExclusive
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TVTranscript
00:00 Artificial intelligence which is very much a buzzword of late. Thank you so very much for being with us. I've interviewed you two decades back. You were an inspiration then and you remain a rock star even now and it's great to speak to you. Innovation is something that interests you at so many levels in so many different areas.
00:18 One of the most innovative ideas that we in India have had is our digital back end. You know through the Aadhaar system for example or many other apps and systems which have emerged. How does that contribute do you believe to the India growth story?
00:32 Well there's no doubt that being able to register citizens and get government payments to them directly. You know they don't have to go to a bank branch. Nobody's asking for their part of that cash. The pandemic is a wonderful example where actually going to branches wasn't going to work no matter what.
00:53 And so the amount that's been saved and now the amount that the government's interacting in a rich way with citizens. You know for example I saw an Odisha where they'd registered the farmers and they understood their land and their crops.
01:09 And so they're sending them a regular bulletin and they're communicating about pests and what you need to do. So this is a case where India's been out in the lead. You know India did this thing at scale. They made it work and the Gates Foundation has been involved in some of those projects.
01:29 We're also involved in helping India show other countries. So right now there's 15 other countries at various stages of adoption which a lot of that was kicked off by the way that Modi made that a centerpiece of the G20 meeting.
01:47 It's ultimately about empowerment right. It's not just about efficiency. It's about empowering people women young adults. And you believe that's a model that needs to be replicated elsewhere.
01:58 Well definitely you know paperwork in government and being confused about different policies and you know having the powerful people sort of take away the payments that should come to you.
02:12 These systems are really critical and even like collecting the GST or understanding what's going on with the population. We'll see it get richer and richer in verticals like health and agriculture.
02:31 And every time I come to the country you know I get updated whether it's by government groups like in Odisha you know entrepreneurs like Don and Neil and Connie sit me down and show me what he's seen.
02:45 And you know we're pleased to be a partner both here and in the global quest. Could you tell us a little bit more about the Orissa visit. I do know that there was a lot that he was shown in terms of hard data backing agricultural growth.
03:00 What exactly did you see and how do you feel that that's something that potentially works or does work. Well you've got a lot of farmers and you can never have enough extension workers.
03:12 You know I love extension workers. They're very important. We can empower them to be more productive. But this idea of you have a record of OK where is my land.
03:21 What are the crops that I grow. Take the latest satellite data and see OK are they maturing well. Take all the reports of insects or other pests. Look at the weather forecast.
03:37 The expertise that a big farmer can afford and almost takes for granted. We can now make sure that even the smallholder you know is getting the benefits of all this expertise.
03:52 And so it's it's digital farming and it's it's all about equality. And you know since we are talking about digitalization and technology we are in an era when artificial intelligence is something which affects all of our lives at so many levels.
04:12 I think the most obvious question to ask you is there is a huge concern that a lot of jobs would disappear across sectors and yet artificial intelligence at so many levels is indispensable. So how do we sort of handle this concern.
04:26 Well we're not going to have any time soon in excess of labor. You know we can reduce class size. We can take care of old people. We can take care of handicapped kids. If our society is so productive we can even reduce the work week.
04:44 But until we meet a lot of these needs you know do we have enough doctors. No we we'd like to make them a lot more productive. Individual tutoring is the way to teach kids the best.
04:56 But you know without more productivity it's it's only affordable for a very narrow group. And so you have to go a long ways at upping productivity before you get to the point where you can say OK let's you know have a have a shorter work week.
05:14 But you know that that's a good outcome. So fewer jobs as a result. Not not anytime soon. I mean you know the world has more jobs today than it had 100 years ago.
05:25 100 years ago you had to toil in a backbreaking way just to barely get enough to eat. That was 80 percent of people were farmers. Now we have these demands. You know people want manicures. People want time to be entertained.
05:43 People they want a lot of things. And and so the advances we've had have made our life a lot richer. We've reduced the work week some but that hasn't been the primary thing. Primarily the food we're offered the entertainment you know is just way richer than what our previous generations could even dream of.
06:06 Let me ask you something that really interests me the technology behind A.I. and generative A.I. as a technologist yourself. Do you sometimes are you interested in the entire argument on sentience and computers.
06:20 The entire argument on sentience. Are we getting to a stage when A.I. systems are essentially acting as as human beings.
06:29 Well the you know there's no precise definition of that word. The A.I. systems up until two years ago they could translate language. They could recognize speech. They could recognize videos and audios very very well.
06:48 But they really couldn't read or write. And so what's surprising even to the people who've been watching this their whole life like I have is that with a certain approach and certain scale particularly when we got to GPT for the fluency of having read and then being able to write was in some cases superhuman.
07:16 Yes. Now still full of errors but you know we're working on that. And so the opportunity to make white collar workers way more productive you know answering a support call helping out a customer with their order you know for the first time we can say those jobs will be improved.
07:42 Not just you know when as robots come along the more blue collar type jobs.
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14:02 In simple terms, computers aren't quite thinking in an emotionally mature manner
14:08 that you and I may be.
14:10 Because that is the argument.
14:12 There's an ethical argument and there's a technology argument.
14:14 I'm just curious to know if that's where we're headed.
14:17 Well, the computers have always been superhuman at things like calculations.
14:25 And every milestone we reach, like when a computer was the best at chess
14:29 or then the computer was the best at Go.
14:32 Now if you had a contest to write poems or compose songs,
14:38 the computer would beat 99% of humans.
14:45 And so that threshold of where it adds value and what it can do
14:50 keeps going up and up.
14:57 And that can be a good thing.
14:59 It's clearly different than we are.
15:02 It makes different mistakes than we tend to make.
15:05 Right.
15:06 You spoke about the COVID period a little while earlier on in this conversation.
15:11 You spoke about digitization and how India rolled out vaccines.
15:15 India is also a huge manufacturer of vaccines.
15:18 And God forbid if there is another pandemic type situation,
15:20 do you believe India has a big role in the physical manufacture of vaccines
15:24 for the world?
15:26 Yeah.
15:27 The Gates Foundation is the biggest supporter of the Indian vaccine industry
15:32 with Serum, Bharat, BioE, many incredible companies,
15:37 all of whom put their brilliant work into trying to help out with COVID.
15:44 And the majority of vaccines got made here in India.
15:49 We have a lot of new things we want in vaccines.
15:52 We want TB, HIV.
15:57 We're working with these companies to help them adopt this mRNA,
16:00 which is a technology that we think will be very useful.
16:05 And so the fact that they're very high quality, when they get volume,
16:10 they're very low cost, they're a treasure to the world.
16:15 Specifically, what are some of the areas that you are sort of interested in
16:19 seeing a new generation of vaccines actually happening?
16:23 Just the ones that you mentioned, or where exactly are we in terms of
16:26 developing something new which can actually save countless lives?
16:30 Well, even if you just look at COVID alone, the vaccine's not perfect.
16:34 It doesn't last for five or six years.
16:38 It doesn't block you from getting infected.
16:41 It prevents you from getting severe disease.
16:44 And so now we're doing new generation of COVID vaccines
16:49 because we also need those same features, particularly duration,
16:53 to use it for measles, tuberculosis, and HIV.
16:58 And a lot of this mRNA work is going for cancer vaccines.
17:04 Our foundation is not directly involved in that.
17:09 And so the technology has a lot of promise.
17:13 If we ever had a future pandemic, the ability to adapt is far more rapid.
17:19 And so it's advantageous.
17:21 We're even looking at doing animal vaccines using that technology.
17:27 India faces a disease burden.
17:29 We have a problem at one level.
17:31 It is genetic diabetes, heart ailments.
17:35 But there are also other diseases which you are looking at, for example, anemia.
17:39 Could you tell us a little bit about the work of the Gates Foundation
17:42 when it comes to dealing with anemia?
17:44 Yeah, so I'd say anemia and malnutrition are two of our top priorities for the world.
17:53 But India has its share of challenge there, and it is prioritizing this.
18:01 For anemia, we've always known that if a woman would come in a lot of times
18:06 during pregnancy and get an infusion, we could help get rid of that anemia.
18:12 But it's too expensive and too complex.
18:15 The recent breakthrough is there's a formulation that you could come in only one time.
18:22 And then we're using AI to help place the needle,
18:26 and we're working with Indian partners to get the price of that one infusion down below $10.
18:33 It appears the benefit to the mother of her mental state is dramatically better,
18:40 and the brain development of the baby is also quite a bit better.
18:45 And so anemia has got to be reduced dramatically, and this has great promise.
18:52 India has a strong demographic dividend. We're now the world's largest country.
18:57 But I think the potential of reaching that demographic dividend
19:01 would only be realized if women are much larger active contributors to the formal economy.
19:08 So much of the work of the Gates Foundation is on women's empowerment, women's health,
19:13 women at so many levels.
19:15 How do you see a greater role of women contribute again to the India growth story?
19:22 Well, some of the numbers in India about women's participation are good,
19:26 and some need a lot of work.
19:29 Women's participation is one where the trend's in the right way,
19:35 but there's still a lot to be done.
19:40 Women face particular health challenges. We need to help with that.
19:45 They face certain treatment. We need to help with that.
19:49 Having child care available, if that's culturally acceptable, we know that's a thing.
19:56 The employers all need to get involved in this and do their part to encourage that.
20:05 We're bringing a lot of our health expertise to the conditions that women face that have been underfunded.
20:13 Even when we trial drugs, historically we didn't test them enough on women
20:18 to understand if there were differences there.
20:22 Gender-led development, I think, is the term.
20:26 I announced a new alliance with the Women and Child Department, CII, yesterday.
20:35 It's great to see the attention this is getting.
20:39 It's multiple dimensions, and all of society needs to get engaged.
20:44 Climate change is upon us. It's a reality.
20:47 Even five years back, it was, "What if, maybe, let's see," and now it's here.
20:51 In India, we face a huge problem.
20:54 The melt from the Himalayas, for example, glacial melt, flooding in the mountains,
20:59 sudden cyclones on both the eastern and western seaboard.
21:05 Again, could you share with us what the Gates Foundation is actually doing
21:08 when it comes to thinking about what solutions may be?
21:11 In climate, we have to reduce the emissions. They call that mitigation.
21:18 A lot of that is private companies, the way you make electricity or steel.
21:24 I created a group called Breakthrough Energy to fund startup companies there.
21:28 The mitigation side is largely funding innovators.
21:34 The Gates Foundation is involved in the other part, which is this adaptation.
21:40 Coming up with new crops that can deal with more drought, more floods, higher temperature.
21:47 That's a great partnership with India because the research budget for agriculture in India
21:55 has gone up quite a bit.
21:58 India is, to reinforce the question, India is a very climate-affected country.
22:04 It's kind of funny in a way that temperate zone countries that are the most responsible
22:10 for the problem are not the most affected because the absolute temperature is not so high.
22:17 We have air conditioners in our cars and our homes, so somewhat we are already adapted.
22:26 But this mission of adaptation, we see good practices, things like storm warnings.
22:37 There are parts of the country that have shown that preparedness can make you quite resilient.
22:44 One final question before we let you go. You had a chai the other day, right?
22:49 With a chaiwala. Where was it? In Hyderabad?
22:52 An influencer with hundreds of thousands of people. Firstly, how good was the chai?
22:56 Be honest with us. Was it really good?
22:59 I don't consider myself the best judge, but it was fantastic.
23:04 It was a beautiful view of Hyderabad in the morning.
23:08 They told me they brought a great tea-wala guy in, and he was very photogenic.
23:16 So that was fun.
23:17 Mr. Gates, it's been wonderful speaking to you. We appreciate your time.
23:20 There we have it. Bill Gates speaking to us about so many areas that the Gates Foundation is focusing on.
23:25 Climate, healthcare, vaccines, and of course a fascinating conversation in there on AI as well.
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