>> on a special "titans at the table" we chat with bill gates. he's the world's richest person. d with that great wealth comes great responsibility. >> when i was born almost all countries were poor. >> and joining gates, a friend and fellow flantsdzpist, mike bloomberg. >> there are fewer people starving, fewer people sleeping without a roof over their head. things are better. >> in the bill and melinda

gates foundation, bill predicts that by 2035 there will be almost no poor nations left in the world. what these titans are doing to see that through. >> i read thri your letter. and what i noticed is that you are very optimistic. you say, look, we are better off than we were decades ago. where does this come from? >> well, i think i'm naturally optimistic but i think the facts are almost eye to the optimist and i think it's dangerous that people are focusing on the bad news and not seeing the progress we've made. it means we don't look at the best practices, it makes them less generous. we are raising poor countries up. most people live in middle class countries now. there is more to be done on health and agriculture but the track record of success, if you don't see that you're not going

to participate in what we need to do. >> and you say that thereby no poor nations by the time we reach 2035. >> almost none. land-locked countries in africa, north korea if they don't change the government. but it will be less than ten. when i was born almost all countries are poor. now we're down to about a quarter of them. so if we focus on it, we can make it really exceptional. >> mike, yeah donated about $100 million to the bill gates foundation to eradicate polio. do you share this optimism? >> i couldn't be more in agreement. i think one of the things people miss is that advocates seldom want to acknowledge success because they always want to have more to do, raise more money, be more important. but bill is 100% right. there are fewer people starving, fewer people sleeping without a roof over their head.

life expectancy is generally longer. by any rational measure things are better. that doesn't mean every place or every person. and there will always be a bottom 20% and we'll always redefine what the bottom 20% means. but to say that all the foreign aid and all the money for example that the bill and melinda foundation or bloomberg or lots of other generous people have invested hasn't done anything is not true. a doctor in africa is trying to get numbers and find out what people are dying from. because if you can't measure it you can't manage it, you can't fix it. and we don't know. a lot of times you look at birth certificates it will say act of god. that doesn't tell you where you want to put your money to save people's lives. but bill and melinda working on polio, this is a chance of really eradicating this disease like smallpox. or both of us working on malaria. or things like vitamin a deficiency which cause half a

million people to go blind every year. there's a lot of new ways of distributing. and progress. >> one of the great things is they have never shied away of taking on the impossible tasks. and it turns out that complex problems don't have simple answers. if they did they would have been solved. but they aren't unsolveable either. >> one of the myths about foreign aid is that so much aid goes to government let's say in africa and that they waste that aid or that it gives corrupt regimes a path to not doing the thing that is they need to do. what do you say to that? >> well, historically during the cold war there was a lot of money labeled aid that was really friendship money to make sure the bad guy was our bad guy versus the sow yet's bad guy. but nobody expected that human lives would improve dramatically. now we don't have that agenda now we can go in and say what will this do for nutrition?

what will this do for kids to fully develop physically and mentally and help these countries be self-sufficient? and so many have graduated from aid, mexico, brazil, that now are focusing on the top cases but with the right vaccines, right seeds. and with philanthropists coming floss business-like fiss i think we'll going to do it. >> it also doesn't mean you get 100% of them. we brought smoking down in a good part of this world dramatically. that will save an enormous number of lives. having said that, there's also places where the smoking industry has managed to get poor people who don't know that it's bad for their health to increase their rate of smoking. are we making progress? yes. should we be disappointed? no. should we walk away from it? no. and we work together that's one of the biggest killers, smoking

will kill 1 bhl people this century but we've made progress and we have to look at what works. and if we're not willing to acknowledge what works, we're not going to know how to help others. >> coming up, did someone trigger you to think about this area or was it something that life long -- >> i think he listens to his wife.

>> mike bloomberg spent 12 years running new york. o it's no wonder he thinks big government is the bedrock of society. >> cities are where you distribute services. big government tends to move money around. cities are where you pick tup garbage, where you educate the kids, where you bring down

crime, where you enact health measures that you can actually see, what you can buy, where it's labeled, where you can use it. and i think if you take a look at most of the progress that's been made in climate change, for example, has always been done at the city level. very little even in this country, where we're fighting guns, obesity, school systems fighting crime are done at the still level. >> i've always wanted to know this from you. you have such a huge arsenal, both of you have such a huge arsenal of resources. how do you pick the causes that you get behind sf >> globally i think the greatest ineaktty is how poor children -- ineckty is how poor children don't get to grow up and achieve their potential. they die or simply don't have enough food that their brain develops. so we decide that had most of the money is going to go to that cause. unfortunately, there are things like new vaccines that will

lp those kids avoiding getting sick. five percent of kids die before the age of five. if we can get that down to 1% and match where the united states was in 1980. so it's because of this injustice, because a lot of these things weren't being done at the level they should be, and one should pick an area you develop expizztiss, that's going to be our lifeline work. >> but did someone trigger you to think about this area or was it just something that life long you've always -- >> i think he listens to his wife. >> mill inda has a lot of good ideas. mat ternl health. and we've been doing a lot of things under her guidance and to try to advance the causes of getting the kids so they can get born. and survive the first couple days and then the next five

years. but there's lots of good ideas. and you just have to look. you can't do everything. you have to decide what your core competencesies are. whether you want to do it internally. and like their foundation they administrator funds. in other cases they give funds. we probably do more donating but we have a big group that's working on a lot of the public health issues as well. >> mike, you had certain metrics what you could measure the success of your own projects and initiatives. so when you give money, how do you measure success? >> number one not everything is going to work quickly. touf have patience. number two, if you do something, and in the scientific world and it turns out to be a failure, that in some sense is a success because you don't have to go down that path again. unfortunately in the world i came from you're labeled a failure and -- >> it's in the press. >> and you wasted your money. that's not the case science works. so knowing what you're doing --

and there's a lot of people around trying to apply metrics. in some cases you can. in some cases you have to do it on faith. i know down the road it's going to help and i have to make that bet and give it the old college try. if it doesn't work, don't be stubborn but don't walk away too quickly. >> coming up these titans take their money and experience on the rood. >> there are places where there are no roads. so if you need an operation, you just die.

>> bill gates and michael bloomberg. influnetial billionaires on their own. and together, a philanthropic power house. >> you two are old friends and you work together but you're also very good personal friends. i know mike you're going to be heading off to africa soon on part of a global mayors

conference. and bill you've been to africa numerous times in your foundation's work. what advice do you have for mike when he goes to africa? what do you think he should see there? >> well, my wife melinda and daughter are spending the week there out on a farm. getting down to see these projects is exciting. mike's been super generous on malaria research. so i hope he will see how the death rates are down and talking to the people about which tools are hard to deliver and easy to deliver. africa's fantastic. the cities need a lot of help. the scientific research needs a lot of help. that's why i think both of us are drawn more and more of our philanthropy will help those countries that have great needs. >> one of the place that is melinda is has 50,000 people per doctor. in america we have 500 people per doctor. there are places there where there are no roads. so if you need an emergency operation you just die.

and we've been training people to do appen dectmizz and cesareans which turn out to be relatively simple operations. but without that everybody who needs one is not going to survive. yet with a little help working -- you're not going to cure everything or do open heart surgery but you can do a few things that can make an enormous difference and save countless lives. >> what do you hope to do there? so see accomplished? >> the organization that i'm participating in is a group of 63 cities that focus on climate change. sharing best practices and that sort of thing. but they all have the same problems. they all have to educate and protect and improve the health of people. and all through africa and laten america and asia and europe and america we all have very similar problems. some have different magnitude or different diseases but you don't have to go very far. just go to haiti and look at

the terrible tragedy that's taking place there. the world pledged all this 81 and yet -- money and yet they're there living in tents and not having the ability to be in charge of their own destiny and feed their families. and we've just got to get together and do something about it. >> many people are big admirers of the your work. i'm curious to know who you admire. are there leaders that you look up to? >> we learn from each other. we've actually -- are both early members of the group called the giving pledge for a lot of philanthropists who share mistakes, you know, people like george soros who has done really innovative work. we get to meet the scientists. maybe the most amazing are the people out in the field who have been big parts of their life in africa. taking these tools that we held back and making sure they get out there. i think you have to separate people's political interests

from their willingness to help. there are some, soros is clearly a liberal is a fair way to say it, the coke brothers clearly conservative but the coke brothers have given enormous money to hospitals. >> you don't have to agree with everything everybody does. i don't know if i agree with you. but i think they all deserve credit. and it's an awful lot of people. and there are a lot of people who aren't billionaires who aren't millionaires who write small checks and give their time and go out and work and lobby their elected officials to take government money and try to improve the health of everybody. and they deserve an enormous amount of credit as well. >> maybe that feeds in also to bill what you were talking about with these misperceptions. some people feel that their lives haven't improved. the average american feels their lives haven't improved. how can they care about the problems you're talking about? >> the question is are you willing to spend a little less than 1% on saving lives for

less than $1,000 per life. the european governments tend to be about twice as generous on these issues than the united states. even the u.k. but it's a political decision. and if there's cynicism, if there's lack of understanding that good things are happening out there, then the voters aren't going to be willing. recently, in the budget compromise, polio got an extra $50 million a year. so some progress is being made on something where we have very clear targets. in that case, by 2018 completely eradicating the disease. >> ast also, it's very self-serving as well. if you cure a disease elsewhere you're not likely to catch that disease. if -- and we live in a world where diseases can spread very easily. we want stability around the world. that's self-serving because our safety depends on a world that

doesn't start wars and gets along and there's a compassionate part of this. we have an obligation to stop genocide. i think that you come back to right where we started with this interview. things are better. we can make a difference. you're not going to cure everything overnight or even ever. gu to sit back and say, oh it's hopeless, that's not true. one of the things in bill's letter he points out, the better educated people don't overpopulate the world quite the contrary. a lot of poor people have lots of kids because they don't think they'll survive and there's not going to be a bread winner down the road to take care of them. and if everybody is healthier, it just leads to much more rational world and lets us deal with the real problems. >> coming up. the search for the new head of microsoft. >> has that ever hit your vision in the future of ever going back to microsoft full

time?

>> before he was a philanthropist bill gates founded one of the most successful companies ever, microsoft, where he remains chairman. >> how involved are you on a day-to-day basis with microsoft? >> i'm on the board. and the board is doing some important work right now. the foundation is the biggest part of my time. but then, you know, i put part time work in to help as a board member. >> are you involved at all? or how involved are you with the search for the new chief executive? >> the board is working on that. there's nothing new to say. >> we have the for tune of having the mayor come back to this company and we're very happy to have him back. at boomberg. bill, has that ever hit your vision in the future of ever going back to microsoft full time? >> my full time work will be

the foundation for the rest of my life. my wife melinda and i are enjoying that. i get to do it indepth. so i'm not going to change that. although, i will help out part time. >> mike, tell me how you think, in the 12 years that you have been in public office, technology, the industry itself has changed dramatically. new pine nirs that are following the footsteps of bill gates. what is your take? >> enable is the enabler, technology is the tool. but i think the base 86 hasn't change. business, philanthropy is about looking people in the eye. you've got to be very careful and not to think that technology is going to do everything for you. ethics matter. competency. the education of our kids is the most important thing. there's enormous changes in the job prospects for people at

every level. and some are going to lead us down the path with some very severe problems. but nevertheless, the first and most important thing is every kid getting a good education, and in some parts of the world they understand that and in some parts of the world they don't. and sadly, in america, we don't seem to. we keep falling in these rankings. we used to be in the top 10, now we're lucky to be in the top 30. that does not bode well for our future. we've got to pull together and get away from this partisan stuff and start devoting the resources we need if we're going to have a future. >> bill, you are passionate as well about training our young people, particularly in computer science, that there's not enough training there. >> i think education is a topic mike and i think is incredibly important. we've been willing to create some controversy saying that less let's help teachers be better, let's try out new approaches. the status quo is pretty unsatisfactory. and technology is going to

help, particularly for that motivated learner. but how do you create the motivation broadly? that's mostly a human problem in helping the teacher do it as best possible. >> and just on a final note, bill. tell me what you think about the state of the technology industry now, and how the new crop of leaders -- how you see them. >> well, the rate of innovation is faster than ever. things like understanding speech and vision, taking large amounts of data and understanding that. big high resolution screens that will be on your walls in the office at home. so we're really in a fantastic period where finding information, understanding information is going to get a lot better. and that will lead to productivity. we can simulate things so that new product design and innovation results faster. we see it in biology, even understanding complex systems and what drugs should be tried

out. so i'm a great believer that whether it's helping the poorest or just hepping the global -- helping the global economy, technology can solve a lot of problems. >> go back and look at what people predicted a few years ago, they were so far wrong. almost everything they predicted has been done. in the next two or three years we will improve technology more than was done from the beginning of inventing electricity to today. >> exponential. >> there's no industry that is not going to have to adjust and change. some will do it successfully, some won't. some people are going to have better jobs, some people are going to have to find ways to make sure that they're included. we shouldn't walk away from it. but it is very serious problem. not just an american problem. it's a problem around the world. particularly in the middle where an awful lot of automation is taking place, that gives you cheaper better products but also ream ploys

fewer people and we have to find a way to get everybody involved. >> thanks for joining us.