Bill, welcome back.
I always like having you on the show.
I actually...
Just thought of this seconds before it.
I apologize.
Here, I'll just put this.
You didn't see anything.
Welcome.
Back to the show.
I always love having you here.
Source code is out today.
Congratulations on this.
It's fantastic.
You worked hard.
It was kind of fun to look back.
Yeah, I don't do that much.
Yeah, why did you want to do this, like looking all the way back just to your upbringing?
You know, I'll turn...
70 this year.
Microsoft turns 50.
My foundation will be 25.
You know, it's time I looked back a tiny bit and thought through
You know, the incredible luck I had with parents and timing and.
So many things that...
set me up for an amazing life.
Yeah, you do talk about your mom a lot in this book.
What a big influencer.
I know everyone's mom is.
I love my mom, too.
Yeah.
What what what exactly.
do you have of anything you remember your mom being very influential in you?
Well, when other families had come over...
you know, we'd talk about what their kids were up to.
And then after they left,
my mom would say, oh, they must feel terrible their kid didn't go to
college or you know they're not doing very well and I'd be like oh
I get what you want me to do.
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that was a sideways thing.
You better go to college, yeah.
And then you went and dropped out.
I did.
Yeah, good for you.
Good for you.
I went on Lee.
Yeah, you did.
You actually wrote a nice letter.
You went on leave.
You go, I'm starting a company.
I might be back if it doesn't work.
Yeah, you did say that.
It's kind of cool they have the letter in here.
I also thought it was very interesting to a lot of the Boy Scouts staff.
Yeah, I got to do a lot of hiking in this Seattle area.
I wasn't very good at it, but I loved the camaraderie.
Yeah, me too.
I never, I didn't...
I wasn't a boy scout.
My parents didn't let me.
triumph or yeah or something I didn't get to but
I got all those magazines and learned how to tie knots and stuff.
I tried camping out once in my backyard.
And I know, that was my big adventure outside.
My mom came out midnight, like, middle of the night and said,
This is scary.
It's scaring me.
Also, I want to say the proceeds from this book is going to United Way worldwide.
It's been a great night.
United Way because of your mom.
Yeah, my parents were both very involved.
And the whole volunteering thing, giving back to the community.
They set an example that
I'm trying to live up to.
Yeah.
You really are, yeah.
You're doing a good job.
50th anniversary of Microsoft.
You look back and you go, man, oh, man, I mean, you are Bill Gates.
You became.
Like, before you, who do you even think...
Who'd you look up to?
Or who was that?
There were scientists like Richard Feynman,
There was no computer industry except for these people.
big expensive machines.
So it was IBM.
was this company and people thought computers were kind of.
against them because they were only for big companies.
And then when the personal computer came, it was more like, OK, power to the people.
and we got to be part of that because
By age 18, I'd done a lot of software, and we saw the miracle.
of the chip.
and that it would change everything.
You said that everyone's gonna have a personal computer, and people laughed at you, and they go, yeah.
Right.
We'll see.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, everyone's got one in their pocket now, I guess, right?
Yeah, no, we used to say on every desk and in every home, and now...
We've gone even far beyond that.
Does it fuel you to work harder when people...
doubt you and say, no, you can't do this?
I think so.
I think kind of proving to my mom that I could exceed her expectations.
patient.
And then just the dream of, OK, wouldn't it be cool?
I wanted to have.
a personal computer and my friend Paul Allen.
And I, in the early years, you know,
figured out, hey, we see this and other people don't.
We don't know why.
but let's go show them.
He sounds like fun by the way, Paul Allen.
He was a Hendricks fan, he played the guitar.
Yeah, I experimented with LSD.
He made me do the same thing.
Yeah.
Did that?
Hold on, now.
I don't want to have no flashbacks.
But what was that like?
Do you remember the experience?
It was a little crazy.
The funny thing was later,
when Steve Jobs was kind of denigrating me.
He said, oh, Bill Gates has no design taste.
He should have taken ass.
And I was like, wait a minute.
I took the acid, it was just, I got the batch.
That's about code, not about design.
So, you got the weird batch.
He got a very different batch than I did.
Yeah.
But you you we wouldn't recommend anyone go out.
No, I actually don't
No.
It's like you think you've solved the problems of the world and then you don't really or
It turns out it's all kind of fake.
I like when my mind works
and I was kind of worried afterwards that I'd mess up my mind.
Uh, you know, and erase all my, my knowledge, uh,
Wow.
So even though I was a big risk taker,
then I thought, no, no more of that.
I'm going to just...
work super hard.
In my 20s, I
was I didn't take weekends or vacations.
It was kind of...
Over the top, but it was super fun, and you just live
in your office.
Yep, I knew everybody's license plate.
so I knew when they came, when they went home.
And what did mom say when she found out you were doing this?
By then, she had relaxed a little bit.
Yeah.
She always said, OK, you need me.
for this or that.
And so we had a
some intents in our relationship.
Both she and my dad, in their own way,
were fantastic.
My dad more by setting a model of calmness and...
showing you really can be on top of the world.
my mom by kind of pushing me, even though I pushed back.
That's good.
I think you did okay.
Yeah.
Winner.
Everyone's talking about AI.
And that's the big topic, everyone's going to take over.
and all this stuff, and it's bad or it's good or we don't know.
What are the pros and cons for...
in layman's terms for someone like me.
Yeah, so the era we've...
come to is
sort of the vision that computing was expensive.
basically became free.
the era that we're just starting.
is that intelligence is rare you know a great doctor a great teacher
And with AI,
over the next decade that will become
free commonplace, you know,
great medical advice, great tutoring, and
It's kind of profound because it solves all these specific problems.
have enough doctors or mental health professionals.
But it brings with it...
kind of so much change
You know, what will jobs be like?
Should we, you know, just work?
like two or three days a week.
So I love the way it'll drive innovation forward.
But I think it's a little bit unknown.
Will we be able to shape it?
And so legitimately,
People are like, wow, this is a bit scary.
completely new territory.
I mean will we still need humans?
Not for most things.
You know, we'll decide.
I mean, hosting a talk show, definitely.
Really?
Well, we'll decide.
You know, like baseball.
We won't want to watch computers play baseball.
Yeah.
You know, so there'll be some things.
that we reserve for ourselves.
But in terms of making things and moving things and growing
food over time.
those will be basically solved problems.
which we need to solve problems in.
because you got some grandkids.
I do.
I have a two-year-old and a three-month-old.
That's pretty awesome.
That's cute, huh?
Boy, girl.
Two girls.
Both here in New York.
Really?
Do you like being a grandpa?
It's fun.
I think the best part is yet to come.
Because I like to read books to them, eventually take them on.
on trips, but even the two-year-old's kind of a blast.
Oh, that's fantastic.
Now, I want to ask you two, because there's...
nice thing about being optimistic about the future.
What keeps you optimistic and what could you tell everyone to stay optimistic about?
of the future.
Well, I think the ability...
to improve health.
Even Alzheimer's, which has been tough.
all the diseases that are still.
in the developing countries like malaria, HIV.
uh polio uh we're
Very close, I spend a lot of time on that.
With luck, in the next three or four years, that'll become the second disease that's completely
completely gone.
And even in areas like climate,
You know, I think we can innovate.
We need to make really, really cheap
green products.
Asking people to pay extra?
They should pay extra.
for clean products, but if you take the whole globe,
They probably won't do it.
And so the way to kind of get there
to innovate so the clean one is cheaper than the dirty one.
And there's a lot of great stuff coming along.
So I'm a little more optimistic about that than people don't get to see that.
innovation pipeline.
Yeah.
All right.
More with Bill Gates when we come back, everybody.
I want to ask some more questions.
Come on back.