- Bill Gates said there are four things younger generations have to worry about in an interview with Patrick Collison.
- He identified the climate crisis, unchecked AI, nuclear war, and the spread of disease.
- Despite his concerns, Gates said he still thinks people will be “so much better off” in the future.
If Bill Gates were young again, he says he would be afraid of more than just the atom bomb.
“There’s, you know, about four or five things that are very scary, and the only one that I really understood and worried about a lot when I was young was nuclear war,” Gates said in an interview with Patrick Collison.
Gates, the founder of Microsoft and current chair of the Gates Foundation, shared his perspective on the evolving risks facing society.
“Today I think we’d add climate change, bioterrorism slash pandemic, and keeping control of AI in some form,” Gates said. “So, you know, now we have four footnotes.”
Gates also listed social polarization as a potential problem, adding that “the younger generation has to be very afraid of those things.”
This isn’t the first time Gates has identified these specific areas of concern. In a blog post from 2023, Gates said that as his family grows, so does his desire to better the world they live in.
“A grandchild does make you think about how we make sure the future is better — politics, health, climate, etc.,” he wrote.
Gates said society is suffering from a dearth of intelligence. But in that respect, he believes that AI could present a solution, rather than a further problem. Despite the technology’s possibly cataclysmic potential some have warned of, Gates thinks it could be harnessed productively.
“We don’t have as many medical experts, you know, people who can stay on top of everything, or people who can do math tutoring in the inner city,” Gates said. “And we have a shortage of intelligence, and so we use this market system to kind of allocate it. AI, over time — and people can argue about the time frames — will make intelligence essentially free.”
Despite the challenges, Gates said he still expects the citizens of the future to be largely better off — if they address the risks.
“Absent not solving some of these big problems, things are going to be so much better off,” Gates said. “Alzheimer’s, obesity, you know, we’ll have a cure for HIV, we will have gotten rid of polio, measles, malaria. The pace of innovation is greater today than ever.”
Fear can often act as a paralytic. But in this case, Gates believes it could prove a galvanizing force to younger generations.
“They’ll actually, to some degree, exaggerate the likelihood and maybe the impact of some of those things in order to activate people to make sure we steer clear of those things,” he said.
