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by downloading duckduckgo on all your devices today. this is "gps" the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you from new york. today on the program, the growing fear that the war in gaza will spread. could it happen? is it likely? i'll ask "the new yorker's" robin wright and general mark berkmeyer land. also, a.i. it's what everyone is talking about from davos to detroit, shenzhen to silicon valley. i'll talk to two of the smartest brains in technology who will tell you what you need to know now.

first, the man behind chatgpt, sam altman, the ceo of openai. then bill gates, the co-founder of microsoft. but first, here's my take. for all of the focus on the many geopolitical crises across the globe, the one that is potentially the most dangerous has actually been trending in a positive direction. ian bremer, the founder of our asia group said to me the biggest up side in the past months has got to bel stabilization of u.s./china's relations. this is one more sign of a thaw in relations. military-to-military talks have

resumed. there are constructive trips to china. the indoe pacific work has begun. they seemed to have stopped their dangerous maneuvers. over the prior two years since the fall of 2021 there had been nearly 300 such incidents against u.s. air craft and those of u.s. allies and partners and the taiwan elections, while going against china's hopes, were handled maturely by both sides. this is all to the good. the mistrust, miscommunication and lack of contact that characterized the relationship for the first two years of the biden administration was dangerous. this rivalry could easily spiral into an unconstrained arms race in everything from artificial intelligence to space weapons, splinter the global economy and descend into the first great power war since 1945. both sides have adjusted their

attitudes. the larger shift has come from beijing. xi jinping came to power in the wake of the global financial crisis convinced the u.s. was waning. he had said the east is rising and the west is declining. he wanted china to lessen its economic dependence on the u.s. and make the technologies of the future at home. he negotiated a more ambitious foreign policy. xi publicly declared to an audience of american business executives that china has no intention or desire to replace china. he and wang yi have said cooperation between the u.s. is imperative. he courted american business in california. much of the shift in rhetoric probably stems from beijing's recognition that its own economy is floundering and that the u.s.

is booming. it's alienating people from india, australia, germany. a recent pew study showed 22 of the 24 countries surveyed viewed the u.s. more favorably than they did china. washington for its part came to realize that u.s./china relations were veering badly off course and could lead to dangerous spirals, crises and conflict. if taiwan in particular were badly handled, everyone would suffer, including the taiwanese who by large majorities want the status quo to continue. there's also an up side to better relations between the two powers which remain deeply intertwined economically. many have made clear to washington that while they seek america's security help, china will remain their largest economic partner. none of this is to suggest that things are now warm and friendly. new crises will emerge as china's affordable evs flood the markets, expect a big debate in

some western countries over how to respond. for germany, china was the great savior for its auto industry absorbing a large share of german exports but today chinese cars are the greatest threat to that same industry. there will be new tensions over pharmaceuticals, biotech products, but they will now happen in the context of a working relationship between washington and beijing, which is reassuring. part of what has allowed the shift in washington's attitude is the realization that china is not ten fetet tall. just as japan, they projected china's growth forward and panicked. as the german proverb goes, trees don't grow to the sky. china's growth has slumped substantially, made worse by many bad policies over the years. the demographics and productivity, main two

components of economic growth, are both weak. china remains a powerful force but it is not going to take over the world. a crucial attribute of the age of hegemony which began 18 years ago, it created a system in which others could grow and pro prosper. as long as they did not disrupt the national order, they could thrive economically, politically, socially and culturally. this was rooted in a confidence that the united states could compete and do well with rivals but it insisted the rivalry not turn into a geopolitical one where there is no win-win solution and the global system would break down. if china plays by these rules, washington should give it some space. as america's economy powers ahead, the country would do well to maintain confidence in itself and design a foreign policy based on that accurate premise rather than one that is forged

on doom and despair. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my washington post column this week. next on "gps" the international court of justice has a ordered israel to take all measures to prevent a genocide in gaza, but will that translate into a swifter end to the war? i'll ask general mark hertling and robin from "ththe new yorkr times"s" next.

the international court of justice on friday ordered israel to take all measures to prevent a genocide in gaza. it has led to what it's called an international catastrophic situation. the court notably stopped short of calling for a cease-fire. the court will continue to hear south africa's arguments and israel's defense in a trial that could take years. meanwhile, cia chief bill burns

is meeting with top israeli and qatar rio figures alls. squloing me is mark hertling and robin wright. mark, let me begin by asking you, israel has this international pressure to cease or scale back its operations and there are fears of a widening war. in the midst of all of this, is israel achieving its objectives? are they succeeding?

>> indicators state that israel has disabled 20 to 30% of the hamas network so far. the early comments about destroying hamas, destroying an ideology or what we've talked about it or what the israeli military has done with the terrorist network in gaza. it's fascinating because by the standpoint of time and alliances, time is not on israel's time. they are built underneath the civilian population to draw israel in. this puts the israeli military at a disadvantage while they do try and see it. there's still much that remains

in the south. >> robin, that's striking to me what mark hertling is saying. they've only destroyed 20, 30 perfection percent. as far as i can tell they've leveled northern gaza. inflicting pretty severe damage in the south now. is all this to destroy the fighters? what do you make of the political fallout? or is it the price they have to pay? >> well, hamas if it can survive politically will think it has won a significant battle to show it's weak. israel faces serious political challenges.

what should it did first? hamas has the largest strong hold. hostages are the largest issue for the israelis. it's very hard to see that hamas is going to release all of these people in some sort of temporary cease-fire. that's how you pressure them. to allow hamas to exist in gaza. >> mark, looking at this situation. as i said, there's a military objective. there are also political objectives. is there another path? people are saying it should be a much more targeted accusation or do you have to -- it does feel like it's a very costly way, if

you're right and the justice scored 20 to 30% of hamas, that means there's months more of very intense fighting with lots of civilian casualties to go. is that the only way? >> i think interestingly enough, fareed, john spencer wrote an article saying hamas is using time and the tunnels as their strategy. purposefully built tunnels and the knowledge hamas has israel will continue to use their military advantage to destroy them and at the same time they can't get to the underground tunnels and so much effort has been placed in m building these tunnels, that it makes it very difficult for israel to even achieve their complete military objective, much less their strategic ability. >> fascinating to hear you

because it makes you realize how despite the fact israel is so much stronger than hamas, you looked in on the numbers, it has capacity to dwarf hamas, it is still at a kind of disadvantage. stay with us. when we come back, i want to ask whether this war will spread. robin wright says it already has spread. i'll ask her to explain when we come back.

. around we are back with retired u.s. army general mark hertling and robin wright. robin, you say this gaza operation has already spread in the sense that it has involved, it has kind of intersected now with lots of different things going on in the middle east. can you explain what you mean? >> before october 7th there were ten different conflicts playing out involving diverse rivalries, different goals, different a goen das, but since october 7th they have all had a kind of common thread. various conflicts have

intersected. for example, before october 7th hamas and hezbollah will fighting different conflicts with israel. they shared a common strategic goal in pressuring israel or eliminating israel but they had their own local agendas. the same is true of the houthis and which became regionalized after saudi arabia attacked yemen in 2015. only after october 7th did you see the houthis becoming an international element capable of lopsided leverage over international shipping, 30% of which goes through the red sea and the suez canal. then you have the different american components based in syria and iraq fighting the remnants of the islamic state. suddenly you find that the kind of occasional pot shots that the iranian backed militias in both of those countries would take against american troops being --

kind of merging because of gaza, in sympathy with gaza. then you see the bigger thread that plays out through all of them that pits the united states against iran. ironically, no one wants a bigger war. there's so much momentum. it's had ard to see how the united states can contain it. even if there is a cease-fire. >> that's amazing. two trends are heightening the war, one is the israeli issue. all of these militias and proxies feel like they want to do something in sympathy with the palestinians. all of them, almost all of them want to do something with iran.

>> yeah, the intent of the administration is to deter it. it always has to be part of a conversation in warfare. time and alliances. for any country to win a warfare, they strengthen and keep their alliances intact. at the same time, they must continuously weaken their enemy's forces and counter their enemy's alliances. what we've seen is the alliance between israel and other countries is declining because of what we already stated. the unfortunate humanitarian disaster. the hamas alliances are growing in strength. they are bringing those alliances together of the houthis, hezbollah, the pmf forces from iran and countries like syria and iraq. all of those things are growing in support of hamas. we're seeing one side deteriorate, the other side grow

in strength. so it will be very difficult for the united states to continue to deter a growing alliance that's supporting hamas. that is the intent. >> since i have robin, what do you think in response to ukraine, they're trying to make sure the west stays resolved. how do you read the situation? is it dire? >> i think it is dire. and it's going to make it much more difficult for ukraine politically, diplomatically, most of all militarily to hold back vladimir putin's intention of taking more ukrainian territory. once the united states backs away, the question is can europe

compensate? there are implications it can't or it won't. the war in israel has diverted attention, where are american interests in weaponry? where are they going to go? this is -- the two wars are being conflated as well in terms of where does the united states use its energy, its leverage and its armors. >> mark hertling you were very strong and prescient that the ukraine eian military would do better than they thought. eric schmidt has an article saying the russians are winning the drone war right now. what does it look like on the battlefield for ukraine? >> well, fareed, i'll go back to my two themes of this morning, time and alliances.

i watch the daily situation reps and in most areas are going on the operational defense. they are still ineffective and offensive. due to the russian approach to combat today, they ignore massive casualties and they will bleed their army. the key is how will they fit in. ukraine, why would we not continue to support them. they are a partner in freedom and attempting to regain their sovereignty. the truth is, fareed, right now i think ukraine is holding their own. unless there's some relief from the u.s. congress and others to

continue to provide arms and ammunition, it will be troublesome for 2024. there are some that think they can build it for counter attacks. that's a four-year war at that point. >> mark hertling, robin wright, really interesting conversation. thank you so much. next on gps, a conversation with the leading tech figure of the moment. sam altman, whose company, of course, is behind chatgpt.

artificial intelligence was the phrase on everyone's lips at davos this year. i had the opportunity to moderate a panel with several major players in the technology field. one of the panelists was openai's ceo sam altman. his company is the creator, of course, of chatgpt which has sent shock waves through the world, that's why it was such

big news last year when altman was abruptly fired as ceo then very quickly rehired. we talk about ai and that board room drama. >> i think most people are worried about two opposite things of ai. one is it's going to end humankind as we know it and the other is why can't it drive my car? where do you think realistically we are with artificial intelligence? what are the things it can do effectively and what are the things it cannot do? >> i think a very good sign about this new tool is even with its very limited current capability and its very deep flaws, people are finding ways to use it for great productivity gains or other gains and understand limitations. so, a system that is sometimes

right, stieometimes creative, on totally wrong, you don't want that to drive your car. you're happy for it to help you brainstorm what to write about or help you with code that you get to check. >> the thing that i think people worry about is the ability to trust a.i. at what level can you say i'm really okay with the a.i. doing it, whether it's driving the car, writing the paper, filling out the medical form? and part of that trust, i think, always comes when you understand how it works. and one of the problems a.i. researchers have, a.i. engineers have, is figuring out why it does what it does. you know, how the neural network operates? what weights it assigns to various things. do you think that we will get there or is it getting so inherently complicated that we are at some level just going to have to trust the black box?

>> so, on the first part of your question, i think humans are pretty for giving of other humans making mistakes but not all for giving of computers making mistakes. well, self-driving cars are already safer than human-driven cars, probably has to be safer by a factor of i would guess 10 and 100 before people would accept it. and i think the other thing is going to happen for other a.i. systems. i also think what it means to verify or understand what's going on is going to be a little bit different than people think right now. i actually can't look in your brain and look at the hundred trillion synapses and try to understand what's happening in each one and say, okay, i really understand why he's thinking what he's thinking. you're not a black box to me, but what i can ask you to do is explain to me your reasoning. i can say, you know, you think this thing, why? and you can explain first this,

then this, then there's this conclusion and that one and i can decide whether that sounds real to me or not. they will be able to explain to us in natural language the steps from a to b and we can decide whether we think those are good steps. >> one of the things you and i have talked earlier, one of the things you've always emphasized was you thought a.i. can be very friendly, very benign, very empathetic, and i want to hear from you, what do you think is left for a human being to do if the a.i. can out analyze a human being, can out calculate a human being, a lot of people say that means what we will be left with, our core innate humanness will be our emotional intelligence, our empathy, our ability to care for others, but do you think a.i. could do that better than us as well? and if so, what -- what's the

core competence of human beings? >> i think there will be a lot of things. humans really care about what other humans think. that seems very deeply wired into us, so chess was one of the first like victims of a.i. deep blue and all of the commentators said this is the end of chess fwhou that a computer can beat the human. no one's going to bother to watch chess again ever. it's over, play chess again. chess has i think never been more popular than ever. almost no one watches two a.i.s play each other. we've had better tools before. we're still very focused on each other. i think we will do things with better tools and i admit it does feel different this time. general purpose cognition feels so close to what we all treasure about humanity that it does feel different. so of course, you know, there will be kind of the human rolls where you want another human. even without that, when i think

about my job, i'm certainly not a great a.i. researcher. my role is to figure out what we're going to do, think about that, and then like work with other people to coordinate and make it happen. and i think everyone's job will look a little bit more like that. we will all operate at a higher level of distraction. >> sam, when i look at technology my fear is often what would bad people do with this technology, but there are many people who fear this much larger issue of the technology ruling over us, right? you've always taken a benign view of a.i. or relatively benign view, but people like elon musk, sometimes bill gates, other very smart people who know a lot about the field are very, very worried. what is it -- why is it that you think they're wrong? what is it that they are not

understanding about a.i.? >> well, i don't think they're guaranteed to be wrong. this is a technology that's clearly very powerful and we don't know -- we cannot say with certainty exactly what's going to happen. it could go very wrong. the technological direction that we've been trying to push it in is one we think we can make safe, and that includes a lot of things. we believe in deployment so we put this technology out into the world along the way so people get used to it, so we have time as a society, our institutions have time to have discussions, figure out how to regulate this, put some guardrails in place. >> can you technically kind of put guardrails in, a constitution for an a.i. system? would that work? >> if you look at the progress from gpt 3 to gpt 4 to how well it can align itself to a set of

values, there's a harder question besides the technical one. who gets to decide what the bounds are. what am i allowed to do with it versus not? so that's a big societal question. i mean, i believe and i think the world now believes that the benefit here is so tremendous that we should go do this, but i think it is on us to figure out a way to get the input from society about how we're going to make these decisions not only about, you know, what the values of the system are, but what the safety thresholds are and what kind of global coordination we need to ensure that stuff that happens in one country does not super negatively impact another. i like that people are nervous about it. we have our owner vowsness. we believe we can manage through it. let it co-evolve and sort of step by stwep a very tight feedback loop and course correction build systems with tremendous value while meeting

the safety requirements. >> sam, you were involved in what is perhaps the most highly publicized boardroom scandal in recent decades. what lesson did you learn from that? >> i mean, a lot of things. i'm trying to think what i can say. one thing that i sort of observed for a while is every one step we take closer to very powerful a.i., everybody's -- everybody's character gets like plus ten crazy points. it's a very stressful thing, and it should be because we're trying to be responsible about very high stakes. and so i think that as -- i think one lesson is as we get -- we, the whole world, get closer to very powerful a.i., i expect more strange things. and having a higher level of preparation, more resilience,

more time spent thinking about all of the strange ways things can go wrong, that's really important. the best thing i learned throughout this by far was about the strength of our team. like the team -- the company would be fine without me. the team -- either the people that i hired or how i mentored there, whatever you want to call it, they were ready to do it, and that was such a satisfying thing. that was my best learning of the whole thing. next on "gps" i'll be back with bill gates who will tell us about his plans for a.i. to save lives, many lives.

you may know adam schiff's work to protect the rule of law, or to build affordable housing, or write california's patients bill of rights. but i know adam through the big brother program.

we've been brothers since i was seven. he stood by my side as i graduated from yale, and i stood by his side when he married eve, the love of his life. i'm a little biased, but take it from adam's little brother. he'll make us all proud as california senator. i'm adam schiff and i approve this message. they said that it tends to help the world's poorest by using a.i. i spoke to gates at the world

economic forum at davos last week about the future of technology. he brought a backpack with him filled with a.i.-powered goadges which will save lives. great to see you. >> great to see you. >> people are looking at what's going on in gaza, what's going on in ukraine, fears over taiwan, and generally speaking there's a lot of gloom and doom. you've always tended to be something of an optimist. in today's world, are you still very optimistic? >> well, absolutely. the progress we've made on things like childhood death are pretty miraculous. >> at the turn of the century about 10 million kids are dying before the age of 5. founded a thing called bobby for

veengs. childhood deaths were cut to less than 5 million a year. you can even think 5 million lives a year, that even compared to the super tragic situation in ethiopia, sudan, gaza, ukraine means that we are making pro progress. >> so when you think about the future, it does feel like so much of that rested on a degree of global cooperation. western countries, rich countries able to provide aid. the south was willing to partner in various ways and what you notice now is in the rich countries there's more of a reluctance. the republicans are turning pep far, biggest aid that was

helping in africa, they are turning against it. money is running out for it. in the south you are seeing greater resistance to this. do you worry that sort of nationalism and politics is going to make it harder to achieve the kind of outcomes you describe? >> yes. we could have a period where things go backwards. if countries turn outward, but the morality of caring about it, new innovations, making sure that the cost is brought down, i think that's so compelling that east even if briefly we get distracted, i have a sense of urgency. that's why gates foundation will invest a record amount in these things. and, you know, we'll -- >> what will you spend this year? >> we'll spend overall 8.6 billion and over 2/3 is global health. >> bill, let me ask you about technology because this is

something you've spent a lot of time thinking about, not just creating. my sense from reading your blog post and such is that you regard a.i. as something as big as the internet. i remember when the internet first came about, you initially didn't think a lot about it it, then you did a deep dive and you wrote this memo where you said, this changes everything. is a.i. at that level? >> absolutely. a.i. reached a threat hold, chatgpt 4, where it can essentially read and write, and it's not perfect yet, but the piece and improvement is dramatic. it's almost like having a white collar worker to be a tutor, to help write, advice, write code, help with support code. economic productivity in the next five years, we inculcate this into the medical sector, educational sector, it's going

to be fantastic. the goal of the gates foundation is to make sure that the delay between this benefitting people in poor countries versus getting to rich countries, you know, we'll make that very short. after all, the shortage of doctors and teachers is way more acute in africa than it is in the west. >> but when you think about how it will change people's lives, give us a picture of what -- you know, not too far. five to seven years from now will our lives be appreciably different? >> as you get more productivity, any activity you can improve, the quality of the work, the quantity of the work you can free up labor to go do other things. you don't need much new hardware other than the back end to run the a.i., it's the phone or p.c. you already have connected over the internet connection you already have. the capital spending other than a.i. companies themselves -- >> with the software, energy.

>> exactly. >> cpus. >> back end data centers will be a cost, but there's innovation that will bring that down to make sure we're not in shortage because the demand is going up so rapidly. it will take a few years to get those costs to be super, super low. but that's -- it's guaranteed to happen. you know, tens of billions are going in. microsoft alone is 50 billion over the next year and so that's why when we look at people like khan academy who we fund and he starts khan a me amigo, keeping motivated to learn math and the same in the health area. >> i think about a.i. and society, one of the things i worry about is we don't really understand how it works, how neural networks work.

and i know there's some work going on. it's fairly preliminary. that turns it into a black box. it becomes a guard like or religious experience where you have to have faith. you don't actually know why it's doing what it's doing. do you think we will figure that out or is it just so complicated it's ever going to be something human beings can understand? >> we'll understand. it is crazy that we are representing knowledge in a profound way. we're encoding what it means to write shakespeare, to write like trump. when you ask it rewrite the declaration of independence or the pledge of allegiance, it clearly has seen and is encoding those things. we have a lot of mathematicians looking and seeing which -- where are the facts stored? where are the writing style? where is that stored? so we should be able to encode directly and test, okay, what knowledge is in there?

as opposed to it's kind of a white box, but because we don't understand it, it still feels like a black box. at the same time, we're using check being -- checking system, you have multiple layers looking, the medical system accuracy up. the quality will go up quite rapidly. >> what are the other innovations in technology that you think are on the same level? because a lot of people think in the biospace the sequencing of the genome and things like that, you're going to see a similar kind of breakthrough. do you feel that way? >> oh, absolutely. a.i. comes into play here. we've got the idea that, you know, in the rich world when you're pregnant they scan you with an ultrasound but it's an expensive instrument, highly trained technician. by taking a.i. and looking at lots and lots of pregnancies,

seeing which came out well and which didn't, we can use this for less than $1 per delivery and warn women, okay, you should go to the hospital because you're going to have a complex delivery or it looks good, you can just stay out in your community. this is going to save 50,000 lives a year as it gets rolled out. >> that's a good example of using existing machinery and using the a.i. with the software, right? >> exactly. although the chip in here is getting cheaper and cheaper as well. so when i look at the world, i see innovation coming faster than ever. the so we need to get ready to take advantage of that, minimize the problems. the actual delivery things, at least for this next decade, we do have headwinds. financial headwinds, distraction, but the moral importance of getting these things out to everyone will be

raising money for gavi to still succeed despite the turmoil. >> bill gates, always a pleasure. >> thank you. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next weekek.