is here, hel gates is microsoft's cochair and cofounder of the bill gates and melinda -- bill and melinda gates foundation. he has gathered investors to put billion's clean energy research and development. the group known as the breakthrough -- they include mark zuckerberg, jeff bezos and more. they have initiatives announced in november at the climate summit in paris where 195 countries reached a landmark

agreement to lower greenhouse gas emissions. i am pleased to have bill gates back at this table. i read the letter which will be released right after this show. it is interesting to me that with all the concentration on the foundation and all the great things that have taken place in terms of poverty and health, two things have come out of it. agriculture and your understanding of how crucial it was in second is energy. so you pose this question. if you could have a superpower, what would it be and you could include anything. you could defy gravity or see said,h walls, but you what? >> i said energy. everyoneing energy for would transform their life as much as anything that i could think of.

lightea of flipping a switch and the lights come on or setting the temperature to hot or cold, if you went to somebody in africa who doesn't have energy and said that was possible, it would seem as bizarre as somebody flying or seeing through walls. it really is a type of superpower. americans have the equivalent of axle onns pushing an their behalf so that their lights light up and their materials get made and their food gets made. modern life is that much about energy intensity. >> you show two things, a global map of the world and you show africa at night. parts of africa are almost dark. the extraordinary thing is that 1.3 billion people do not have electricity.

>> in africa, unless we do better than the current expectation 80% of the people without electricity will be in africa 30 years from now. they have not progressed that much and when you go there at night, melinda and i were in the suburbs driving along, it is here he because all of it is people burning things in big oil barrels. think this is like some strange movie, not a normal city. >> the goal coming out for you and others is to cut greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050. >> as long as you are emitting greenhouse gases, it stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. not all of it, but most of it. the rest goes back into the soil or the ocean. but that long time in the atmosphere means that as long as

you are increasing co2, as long as the emissions are above zero you have a positive warming trend and that is what creates the strange weather and causes crops not to go as well. particularly in an equatorial region you're getting to heat levels that plants and humans do poorly at. ironically you should go to the northern latitudes. there is a net benefit there but a lot of heat in -- humanity, particularly the poorest live in an area where the heat will cause a terrible problem. >> overwhelmingly -- us take a forecast that doesn't assume incredible innovation, that will continue. that we are on today is

we will not be able to make a change away from that will stop >> innovation to me is the answer to most problems in putting energy. so i think of india, because they don't have electricity there collecting firewood destroying their environment, the women are breathing smoke to the children and they get respiratory diseases, it's awful for their health, they do not have lights at night to read, they cannot keep fresh food colts they do not get protein in the diet. there's every reason why india should have electricity. great for their people unfortunately their straightforward path to get there is cold. but india is big enough that if they go down that straightforward path we will not need any of our climate change goals and today we have no alternative that is even close to as cheap, including

reliability which is a fundamental characteristic of energy systems. india ast power cheaply with other things as you can with coal. only with innovation can you square the circle and say should india electrify as fast as it ?an or should they electrify greenhouse gas emission. they will admit as much co2 per person as we have. >> is this your biggest passion? >> is the long lead time thing that requires so much coordination science and politics come together. and very fascinated by it. i still have polio eradication and our health stocks as the things were i feel like we're on track and know what to do. this one's in the category of

great importance and if you wait 20 years to get started, then the time that it takes to invest and change the system, you are really going to miss the window. it has a funny urgency even though the damage is not that dramatic. >> you believe that you can get to zero by the beginning of the next century? >> i believe there are so many paths, over a dozen different paths and we only need one to work to give us this cheap and reliable energy that yes, then you have to deploy that and get .o these wildly ambitious goals >> you talk about a energy miraclhat would that be? >> anything that is half the price of today's energy, cheaper than coal and totally reliable does not depend on the wind blowing or the sun shining.

energy miracle. so if you could take sunlight and directly make gasoline from sunlight, that's called solar fuels energy miracle. . there are scientists who can do that. they're about hundred times less efficient than it needs to be to make any sense. the site even ready for a startup company the story to be in the government lab getting research funding. then with luck it would get to the point where companies will get started in high risk return investors will come along. >> you looking for a miracle. >> what you want to do is enlist both private funding which you time yound at the same want to make sure the government has a role? >> that's right.

basic research, there unique role is basic research. the universities and national labs, in auckland to get right investors to fund the level of research because that's just the very beginning, material science -- stronger magnets, pencil ,trength -- -- tensile strength those are things that will be critical. in the medical sector there is a great pharmaceutical industry, but the u.s. government spends $30 billion per year on basic health research. it has been fantastic for the country and the world. in energy, we are down at less than 6 billion, and that is the number that i am hoping -- the commitment was made in paris by 20 governments including the u.s. to double their energy over a five-year period.

that will raise the supply of innovations and make it right for these amazing groups of investors. charlie: this foundation letter, who is it addressed to, i had the impression you were addressing it to high school students? >> the two things i elaborate on, melinda talks about time and how women have to spend a lot of extra time, more than men in the household. a kid in a high school newspaper in kentucky in appalachia asked us about superpowers and she said time, i said energy. it, it wasd about pointed out to us that those are such basic things about the experience of war people -- of

poor people. even in the u.s. people understand how important energy is and there is still a time and balance. these are not problems that there is a 10-year solution to. voicednger generation their willingness to look at things in new ways. today's teenagers will be in and a lot of the thinking that drives innovation comes from that group. charlie: which of the three has potential? >> i mentioned this idea of the sun being used generate fuels. that is unique because unlike generating electricity where batteries that store electricity are expensive and do not last long, storing gasoline in a gasoline tank, you make it bigger and a consider for as long as you want and when you want the energy just learned.

it is 10 times more dense and energy content than the best batteries that we have today. that would really be special. taking nuclear energy and overcoming a number of problems, the cost of the plans, the safety of the plans were people worry if you have another fukushima or chernobyl accident. that is another path that we could go down. we could take the wind way up in the jet stream and capture that. are requires materials that ultra strong which would be valuable for many things. you could ill bridges that would we are reallynd on the verge of that type of understanding. there are two approaches that people think about. one is that you could just take solar and wind and make them cheap and that is not too hard but then you could have a

battery that is 10 to 20 times better than any battery we have today. >> the problem is chemistry. the number of charges you can put into an area -- there is not a semiconductor thing that lets us jim those things in. what happens is your going between a liquid phase and a solid phase and as you do that, the solid tens to degrade. if batteries could last instead of 400 cycles if they could last for a thousand that really changed the economics. there are ideas along those lines, i have money and many battery companies and there are a bunch that i do not that i would say that all of them are having a tough time because proving that something does not degrade in some physical way over 4000 cycles is not something you can test

overnight, it's very right manic so batteries in the last 100 years have not improved as much as we would need them to to make this the path that we go down. that is a very possible path, we should invest in the research and companies along that path but that is the one that most people think will come and it is not as easy as they think. charlie: 50 years? >> you cannot put a time on it. paths there take 12 is a total of about 12, including taking and burning capturing thend carbon from the flu or the chimney stack. if you have five companies on and they get the basic research backing them up

and the risk capital, even if individually they are only 20% likely, if you pursue those 60 different things, and the chance of a success is very high and that is what i think we should do. charlie: quick questions before we turn to health, number one, have climate deniers gained strength or -- where would you put that component of our population? >> the problem with climate denial is not a huge problem outside the united states. charlie: why is that? >> that's a good question. many issues like agricultural crops call jim o's -- europe is more skeptical of the science on that in the u.s. is.

on climate change we are uniquely skeptical particularly in terms of telling policy makers. there is another group which is a little bit of a problem which is that people believe the climate is a problem but think it's easy to solve and think ok, as soon as that utility guys don't stand in the way of ,ooftops, this thing is solved not just for the power sector but for the transporting industry, everything that we need. that notion that there are simple solutions -- trolley boy is that inhibiting forward progress? >> until that twice 15 november talks, the idea of improving the amount of innovation, increasing r&d was not discussed and i'm still amazed at that. their,tries did commit including china and all the big

ones that you would want, even india made the doubling commitment. we've always put a lot of money into the demand side for clean energy. we have tax credits and renewable portfolio standards where utilities required to buy a certain percentage of their energy from these renewable sources so if you take the effective payments, the increased price of electricity and tax forgiveness, we've put a lot into that demand side and so .as germany, japan and others we need to have a balance where we are also driving the supply of innovation as well.

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charlie: everybody is talking about the zika virus. you looked hard at ebola, tell me where you see this and what is necessary and what did we learn? ebola, thease of orchestration of resources, the private sector's ability to make diagnostics, antibodies and vaccines was pulled together very slowly. where, what roadmap is our liability? what is the regulatory path?

if there are three to four companies, which ones go twice as fast and which dropout? that was chaotic. only now do we have these good ebola tools. if that had spread faster, we would have felt terrible about that. zika is different. it is spread by mosquitoes and not human contact. there is still a lot of is are some narrow part of your pregnancy we can be affected, is it require that you had to have dengue at some point, but it was a bad situation and it's great that the emergency was declared. we can all figure out the private sector innovations that could come in, including in this case killing mosquitoes because this particular mosquito lives in urban areas, mostly around

the equator. heroes saidhe great we should wipe out this particular mosquito and he came very close to it. now you wish, maybe that would've been a good thing. dinky, zika,ies nguyaen glia -- chicke and yellow fever. >> you have said that mosquitoes are the most dangerous animal on earth. >> that's right. the mostof what kills humans? do human kill the most humans, do lions and sharks? the humans killing humans is a strong number, too, that unless 600,000 pluseme

kids who die of malaria -- which is a askew-caused death, that is the animal that generates the most mortality. charlie: and malaria? >> it is all malaria am a there are a few others but it is 95%. charlie: what should we do about the mosquito? >> there are a couple of ideas for changing the mosquito that we have been funding in order to work on dengue and malaria. one idea is that you put a anderia into the mosquito then it does not carry the parasite at all. we have done field trials on that and it appears it works for dengue and zika. that may get ruled out more

quickly. an even more powerful to her that -- tool that spreads faster is to take our new technology that people call crisper and have male and female mosquitoes pass along either something that prevents them from carrying the virus or some thing that kills use gene editing and create a thing called jean drive which means that all of your children male and female inherit something even if only one of your parents have it that is dominant into that generation to not survive or not carry the bad virus. have been asked this question before, coming out of high school today, knowing what you know about genomics and gene editing and at the same time technology, which field would you enter? >> it is a hard choice now.

of digital stuff, in terms vision and robotics continues to be very exciting. not without challenges but mostly positive enablement, that is a wonderful field and will generate tons of jobs that people should want. biology and medical work is also an incredible thing. understanding how these work and in some cases you have to use the digital tools to track the genes and understand them. there are companies working on robotic assisted surgery that could raise the quality and lower the cost. charlie: coming together with genomic technology. >> exactly. stem cells and genetics -- the field of biology is so amazing

and if a kid has interest, the chance they could lead huge breakthroughs are gigantic. but i also want to say energy because we need bright minds to drive it there as well. >> jon: because in not having energy they will not have a full development? charlie: because in not having energy they will not have full development? >> yes. countries like china will also contribute. charlie: the idea is clean energy, not just energy but ?lean energy >> that's right. greenhouse gases constrained, it would be nice if it was a 20% reduction but it is eliminating from country energy systems, that is daunting but it's necessary and that is why all of this parallel work is needed.

>> on the digital side you mentioned artificial intelligence. part of that is finding out what does that mean in terms of jobs and population. about howse questions we spend leisure time and the rest of it. there are also things that concern you and other people. just you, what is your concern about artificial intelligence? >> in the long run, the scale of the intelligence is unbounded. it will get a lot smarter than us. [laughter] so smart that we will have to ask it, how smart are you? that is-term problem predictably in the 20 year timeframe is labor substitution, not super intelligence. of anthat is kind

embarrassment where you should free up people to help every kid in school, every handicapped kid him every elderly person, you should be able to reallocate that if you are not needed to work in that warehouse, get out there and do other things. dovetails into what melinda said about time. >> it will free up time, doing the drudgery. all of that about spending time with kids and being more connected socially we should be able to do more about. she tells a wonderful story in her part of the letter where a family in africa -- the goingpent all of her time to get water and bringing it back and finally she is about ready to leave the marriage. he comes home in the bags are packed and he says what can i do? and she says i am doing everything. all of the stuff at home and you need to help and he agrees.

he starts taking the water himself and the split that. all of a sudden he gets involved in that and they determined there are smarter ways to do that. the point is, freeing up people to have time to participate in all of the issues, jointly. >> that was interesting because when he first helped out he was ridiculed by the other men and he said -- i will keep doing this and what they told belinda was that set an example for that village -- what they told thatda is, when they set example, they set an example for the village. we drive our children to school quite a bit and otherwise, i don't know for sure, use that to encourage their husbands to say they could not say they were too much more busy than i was at that particular time.

charlie: what is the timeframe on artificial intelligence? >> for labor substitution, it will be substantial in the five to 20 year period. and computers used to not be able to see, and we are really good at physical manipulation. making a bed and clearing up a room. taking a patient upstairs. the amount of adjustment and ability is quite incredible, but 1 -- once software achieves those things it is unbounded. sorting parts and a warehouse or picking things out of a bin, computers are just now getting to human level will stop the pot -- problem is 10 years from now they will be at three or four times the human level and humans are not on that same type of improvement curve.

it's like farming. saying tractors will destroy the world. because that took generations, people did adjust. here, the speed will come a little faster and some people do not think it will happen because we have been saying that this would happen before it did and it's like, they have been saying that. and it is true. we cried wolf and then there is a wolf. charlie: on the more concerning ,ide in terms of intelligence is there a breakthrough necessary or is it so underway that it is just time and accumulation of technological advantages? >> on the labor peace hardly any of the experts in the field would disagree that that is coming. on this lease about intelligence you could get the very best people in the field and half

would say -- that will never happen or it will take forever. not amazed that it is subject of which there is consensus. charlie: are you as worried as elon musk? >> yes. charlie: who says it is more dangerous than nuclear catastrophe? ask if this happens it changes life as we know it so life is changed for the entire .opulation charlie: what is the worst scenario? >> that the scene is more intelligent -- charlie: and so they control us? >> so our sense of purpose in which humans are in control or are they in control will have profound consequences.

charlie: how long before that happens? >> when people answer that question they are a little bit guessing. i don't think it will happen in less than 40 years i cannot say for sure it will happen in less charlie: this is the lifetime of your children? >> even if it's 100 years, the thing about this one is not to -- c charlie: in 50 years machines are smarter than humans? >> because humans created them. but they will determine the future of the world. >> humans can decide what goes in or comes out? >> certainly the likely place to

start out is some subset of humans who control those machines. doing private sector is more state of the art intelligence work than the public sector. advances in the internet came from the defense department. >> in the early stage yes but then they had contractors like bbm and eventually the infrastructure got on the private side will stop the i.t. revolution has largely moved to be private sector funded. charlie: but you are saying it's the longer happening there. it's all in the private sector. charlie: on finding out people in venture capital are touring

money into it because they believe it will unlock some kind of future. >> even if you focus on it as a narrow thing you may be creating a general capacity for intelligence. charlie: there is a lot of that now as you would know. so it's a thing with a discussion and the debate ought to begin. it's not like banning that research would be a good move because that just pushes it to less visible locations. turley let's talk security versus privacy, encryption, apple, the fbi and the federal government. >> it would be valuable if the safeguards the government had, when it would go for that information and how it would

deal with it that people felt comfortable with that because if the government is blind, then things like tax evasion, child pornography and most importantly terrorism enabled by nuclear and biological weapons -- our government is not able to fulfill some role of stopping those things. so, it's great that people are talking more, post snowden and everyone about how do you feel about those safeguards. if we cannot as a society discuss those safeguards in a way we feel good about, then the government will not be able to fulfill its function. >> so if you are responsible for the decision as to whether apple should allow the government one-time only to come in and softwaren their labs so the government can try to

have access, are you in favor of that, in favor of a private inpany in this circumstance the secret of their own lab and they are able to destroy whatever they create after they do this for the government one time only, should they do that? >> in every case up until now when the government has come in and said what's the banking information, thanks like to keep their customer information private. no bank is ever defied the apple at the end are just forcing a complete judicial process. thatthink apple is saying when it goes to the supreme court they are saying they will defy the government. charlie: there to sing right now they will not do it so it will be appealed to the district court and appeals court. i'm just asking, what would you do if you were the executive?

would you do the same thing as tim cook? >> they are saying that as a society, we think this discussion of safeguards is important. . don't disagree with that charlie: nobody disagrees with that. >> at the end of the day we want a government that has disability and we trust it to use that on our behalf. stopis where, in order to innovation in biological weaponry from being turned against humanity, you really need government to have a role of trust. fbi in some, the cases, they have not always earned that trust. but i claim its important for the public that we figure out the structure that would put us back into a situation where the u.s. government has the

safeguards and we do trust it so that if the courts rule against apple we are not saying that is a terrible thing. you are as first in all of this as anyone i know. >> the only choice that apple has is to decide whether to comply with the lower court or wait for the higher court ruling. they are chosen to wait. which over time i expect the government will decide not to be blind and it will exercise its sovereign power not to be blind. there will have been a debate about what visibility they have. charlie: are you ok with tim cook waiting until it walks through the judicial process? is it possible to do a one-time only in this one computer and one iphone? >> apple agrees that it is possible. it itey say by doing

proves they can do so. but they have already admitted they can do so. your bank can take your banking information and give it to the u.s. government. they have that ability. your phone company can take your phone calls and give it to the u.s. government. have an but they encrypted iphone that does not allow them to do that. >> that is false. the information that the government is seeking is not in the security processor. the logic about challenging the security processor with the pin is not in the security processor. there is not a technological question here. charlie: what is the question? >> the question is, what will the final court rule on this issue. charlie: why is it so hard to get you to say yet ornate? -- yay or nay?

most of silicon valley is supporting it. they say we do not think the government should be able to access an encrypted phone. apple says we don't how to do it, but we know that they do. >> right. idea of all of the withnment's behavior accessing information in the past, nobody would want to do that. cases -- more j edgar it's more clear. so the idea that you are forcing the discussion about about what would it mean if you cannot trust the government ever to get banking information or call information or iphone information -- it would be great if we could agree on what

safeguards would get us back to saying that at least this government is working on our behalf when it is trying to track down terrorists. apple must have known this was coming because between the west seven and iowa's eight -- ios 8 you have a very different situation. >> the information on that phone is accessible to apple. if anybody was confused about that now they are not. that information is accessible to apple but it doesn't really matter. it's like your bank saying we cannot possibly access your account information. they can and they can resist court orders if they choose to as well. charlie: this is a hard case because of terrorism because there is no violation -- the person who had the phones, two people are dead.

>> the issue is the presidential fact, is this a government who safeguards information? will they use this revealed capability in an appropriate way russian mark >> that is why you have judicial standards? >> and why we have a democracy that sits and debates about what should the patriot act version one through four look like and congress could decide that the government never gets to see bank accounts or travel records. it's all political. the statutes in question here were enacted by the united states congress and it turns out they are using one from a long time ago, but eventually as it has been with the patriot act this will all be subject to democratic discussions. it won't be corporations in the

end although they can talk to congressman just like anyone else. charlie: of is the apple knows they can do it if they are directed to do it, supreme court says the law of the land is that you have to do it they will do it but they said are fighting it because there is no such time -- no such thing as a one-time only fix. if they do this for the government that all the people who have bought iphones under the assumption that they were protected will come after them. the district attorney here in europe said i have 120 cases in which it is about encrypted data in an iphone and every one of them i would like to see opened up because it will be evidentiary and important to me. apple says in china people bought those phones because they thought they would be safe from challenge. that you cannot have a one-time only solution

,ere that if apple does this what their business model was about, what their marketing was about, what their relationship with their customer was about will be voided. >> they can access this information. charlie: you have said that three times, i know that. but they say if they access it for this case than everything we have built -- >> just like your bank or phone company, that's right. anyone who says they can overwrite a sovereign may in the end not be able to do that. charlie: how is microsoft different? arell of the tech companies insisting that the government have really formal orders for anything that they do. no tech company is ever going to volunteer information.

there is still some discretion about do you force us to go to the whole process but the basic is that this is a political decision about when governments can access information and what those safeguards look like and i would say that tech companies saying good reasons let's really have this debate about safeguards because -- in the digital world, and the amount of information about your behavior is larger. in some cases like london where the have cameras, they have dropped crime rates and various things and is that ok? in the u.k. they have decided that the net benefit of that is that countries will have different rules about these things.

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charlie: i think you did a thing london on the desert isle. what did you choose? >> there is a willie nelson song just called "blue skies."

and london on the desert isle. she did a custom spoof version of the economist where all of my friends wrote articles -- that was her equivalent gift to me. trolley boy you also taught -- charlie: you also talk about richard feynman as being the teacher you may have want to have. we all know him from the spaceship disaster and he figured it out. what was so great about him? >> he was so tough on himself in terms of whether he understood rings, he understood physics in a deep way so his lectures explaining physics that he gave in the 1960's i still consider the best way for somebody to learn why physics is interesting and why it was confusing and how they straightened them selves out.

this lecture series was at columbia and then he goes to mostch and does the grueling freshman physics course ever done and thinks i made it too hard. that leads to the final lectures on physics which is a high bar to read those. they are extremely well written. if you want to test your physics knowledge or refresh it, there is nothing better. charlie: did you read them? >> yes, but slowly. it's the slowest thing i have ever read. charlie: do you deeply regret not learning a foreign language? >> i feel like some isolationist, lazy person. charlie: why didn't you? lazy you are not. >> i got fanatic about software and kept putting it off and still to this day i'm hoping to get around to it.

french is easy enough that i should do that. mark zuckerberg learned chinese and give a lecture. speaking friends say it was impressive. so, hey. charlie: there is still time. 50 something and he is thirtysomething. >> not chinese, i am too much of a wimp. charlie: i saw something about how you had hacked into computers. >> that was between ages 14 to 16, we had limited access to computer time. there were timesharing systems -- computers were expensive so people used phone lines to dial into a big expensive computer and you would have 50 people all failed in the same time.

computer time was rare and scarce. i knew her work a few computers and i would get up at 5:00 in the morning. out wew cases we figured figured out how to get on computers we would not have been given access to. charlie: software is the second love of your life? >> i was obsessed with software from a young age. i learned how to write software. charlie: is that your core competence? got me involved in software and i got so deep that it later helped me with math but the thing that you do excessively between 13 and 18 is thing you have the most chance of being world-class at and i only have one thing that i didn't obsessively from 13 to 18 which is try to write good software. charlie: did you?

goodthought i was really and then when i was 15 i got to work on this project and i realized this guy is better than me and he critiqued me and then a year and a half later i got critiqued again and i said, this that was super helpful to have my comeuppance about how did my code compare to other people's code and eventually i was a bit on my own , but yeah, i had to be pretty tough about how good you can get. charlie: my impression of you is that you did what you wanted to as a teenager? 13 my parents were and fairly busy i had a very good deal as a teenager.

schoolnt it to a private . >> that was my real transition where i was thinking that fighting with them was something i could really prove something and they were smart enough to send me to somebody who said that was kind of a war that i had every advantage in. so it was a waste of my energy and i was not going to prove anything because it was almost unfair. he got me to set my sights on -- ok, what am i going to do after high school? my parents were really more ofies than barriers in terms thinking of that framework. reading inraged areas i had not done. >> so you write these book reports -- it is said that you read two to three books per week? >> i try. i end up on average reading one

per week. sapians," which " is quite good. i read this one only for old men called "younger next year." it beats you up about, don't kid yourself, if you do not exercise like mad and eat well, you are in decay. but it says until your 80's, if you exercise six days per week and eat reasonably then your decline from age 60 to 85 with very mildill be because you are telling your body to maintain bone strength and muscle strength, so i found it helpful. charlie: you are listening to that? >> i have never done strength training it says you need do that twice a week so i've taken

a vow to do it. herehe next time i'm whether that will take. and in zero days of strength training as of today you can see the result. looking buff you will know that this book had a behavior.mpact on my charlie:, thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

mark: i'm mark halperin. john: i'm john heilmann. danny glover: i'm danny glover, and with all due respect to sister hillary i am feeling the bern. ♪ mark: hello from las vegas nevada. republican andidates spent the final day in their nomination contest here. it is likely to mark donald trump's third victory in a row.