>> rose: welcome to the program, tonight bill gates on philanthropy, microsoft, india and his mission for the rest of his life. >> i put time into microsoft and i couldn't be more proud of the work they've done with windows 8 and now the surface. but my focus is on the foundation. what's going on in global health. what we're trying to do in education. you know, i'm trying to learn about that. i feel like in terms of

bringing the pieces together, the right innovation, the system thinking that you know, i'm playing the role that is most important. >> rose: bill gates for the hour, next. >> funding for charlie rose was provided by the following:.

>> additional funding provided by these funders: captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. rose. >> rose: bill gates is here, his philanthropic organization the bell and melinda gates foundation is centred on the belief that every life hasek wall value. it follows four values to define t work, optimism, collaboration, rigor and innovation. the foundation has invested more that be $1 billion in programs to fight disease and poverty in india. in january the country marked one full year since the last case of wild polio virus was detected there. gates recently returned from

a visit to india. >> india is an amazing place, 20% of the people on the planet live there. and it's the world's biggest democracy. it's energetic, chaotic. there are a lot of neat new things happening there. they have a lot of talented people. i try to take advantage of all the time to meet with as many of these great people as i can. and it's really a chance to learn. i learn as much on this trip as any trip. >> -- a guy dan particular state, 200 million people so, it would be the fifth biggest country in the world if it was a country all by itself. it's the poorest part of

india, there's a lot of health problems there. the slum is tough to visit because the makeshift homes and the lack of services show you that it's a very tough life. and yet sitting down with the people there, you know, they want their kids to get educated. they're thinking about how many kids they want to have. they do have a sense that things are going to get better. so it's uplifting in a way even though at first it's pretty shocking to be reminded of how tough their conditions are. >> rose: so you go to india what, once a year. >> at least once or twice a year. >> rose: tell me what are you seeing from year-to-year to year. >> well, the country is growing its economy. it's doing that by educating its people better, by taking care of health conditions better. it's doing a lot of innovation on its own behalf. and it, so it is exciting to go and see what's taking place. it often will take steps

backyards as well as step towards-- towards. the democracy pages it a little bit more complex place to get things done. but overall it's been a benefit to india. you know, i would say health is improving as fast in india as any where in the world. >> rose: anywhere in the world, because of the base that they are coming from. >> right, right. that is-- they're reducing childhood death because they're adding vaccine, improving vaccine coverage. they have the poll kbro victory. and that's really energized the health system. and as they are getting more government revenues, fortunately they are putting it into health systems and they get a lot of advice on making sure that money is well spent. that's one of the things we try and help with. >> over the long term, in terms of decades out, will india or china be in a better place. >> well, china is quite far ahead of india in terms of-- .

>> rose: but willing to catch up. >> you know, china would have to hit a platteau. the rate of economic growth in china has been higher than in india for all of the last 20 years. and what that means in terms of, say, the personal computer market is about seven times bigger in china than india. the health indicators are a lot better. so china set a very strong example. now india often will make reforms because they're jealous. there are two big jealousees in india. india's jealousee of china an jealousee within the country from state to state where some states will do reform policies. those will work. and then that is a positive dynamic that has helped a lot. >> rose: which one has the best climate of innovation and culture of innovation? >> well, that's hard to compare. they both are putting a lot into their top universities. in the sense of actual research, china is ahead on

that. in terms of turning out lots of good software engineers, people who are doing coding for companies, all over the world, india is the lead in that. and that's been really a gem in their economy is creating those high-paying jobs. >> rose: and china? opinions china in terms of manufacturing, in terms of broad engineering outside of the computer science base, they've gotten, they have more colleges that are world-class and they do more in terms of research. and so it's further ahead. and it will be hard for india to catch china. >> rose: you used to say to me, many times, that when you, bill gates went to china, they sucked everything they could get out of you in terms of what you thought and what they could learn from you, correct? >> yeah, both countries are very good-- . >> rose: the indian does the same. >> yeah, both countries have looked at the uchlts is and what it does well.

including having really strong universities, including having sort of capitallistic markets. and they've moved in that direction. and in fact their growth comes from that fact. china is dramatic because it was very anti-market until 1979. and then all of a sudden it opened up, brought it a lot of foreign technology so they were way behind india. and then they really went full bore. india has done reforms and every time it does reforms it gets some growth out of that. and the expectation is that will continue. so they both benefitted immensely from looking at the west and looked at what allowed the great success in the west. >> rose: but do you see restrictions on china because there's less freedom of expression, say, than there is in india, that kind of thing? >> well, there is no restriction in terms of inventing-- inventing new medicines or new software or things of that kind. >> rose: just political. >> yeah, it's much more in,

if you want to speak out about what is going on with the government, then you get into an area. but as yet, that hasn't really held back their scientific and engineering activity. most of the people in the computer space, the pharmaceutical space, a lot of companies have both in india china presence now. in fact if a global company doesn't have some presence in those countries you really wonder what are they doing about those markets and the intelligence. >> rose: what about the difference in the company, for example n china many of them have state ownership element. do they have the same thing in india? >> no. fortunately for india that is one thing they have done better. is they have more on the private side. a lot of those state-owned enterprise in china are acting more like private enterprises. the oil companies. the mobile phone companies. there's a lot of those giant companies that are behaving in a pretty strongly

capitallistic way. but dow worry that if the signals of the marketplace and what the government wanted diverged l they be run that way. whereas in india it's much more private sector driven. now they still control prices more. labor mobility is lower than in china. property sales are more difficult. things like water and electricity or subsidized in a way that they're used in a not as efficient fashion. so if you just scored market signals, china flipped over and has been more driven by market signals than india has. >> but the foundations ask much more centered in india than it is in china by a wide margin. >> that's right. and that's because of largely the need in india. that is the north of india including-- people are quite poor there. and the government hasn't gotten the vaccination coverage out it hasn't gotten women to deliver in a facility where they can be

taken care of, even if things go wrong. and so it's that gap that motivates a lot of our work there. some of it though is that in area of vaccines india is more innovative. china is trying to catch up but companies like sura institute a private company is actually the highest volume vaccine manufacturer in the world. >> rose: and did you have some influence on that? did the fact that the foundation came in there and was interested if it and therefore showed some encouragement to them? >> well, sirum had gotten in before we came along but because of their willingness to do high volume low price we've helped them grow. so like the meningitis vaccine being delivered in africa, they became our partner in terms of building that. soer? 's about three times the sides they were when we first started working on projects together. >> how about the partnership with government in which the foundation can sort of do

sikh stuff and the government can bring it up in scale. >> we have had great success with a number of programs, for aids prevention in india what turned out to be the best approach was to create communities of the people who are at risk, including sex workers. and by creating those communities and having peers ed kate each other about what say practice was, aids rates in india have actually gone down. and that's a case where we came in, created the initial framework and now we are returning a lot of that over to the government. and so far they have done a really good job of maintaining the strength of those programs. >> rose: so india as a developing nation is a model for what can be done in partnership. >> absolutely. the fact that it's a democracy. the fact states are seeing each other, trying to catch up. it's a very positive dynamic. >> rose: how much corruption? >> well, there's always going to be some corruption.

you want to design systems that make it harder for there to be corruption. where you can really trace the money down to the recipient of that money. that's partly why we would like digital currencies on cell phones so you don't have as much where somebody else can collectalong the way. >> rose: you'd like to get that done. what's necessary for that to happen. >> the cell phones are now get pog we areful enough. the government has to set some standards. there's a lot of energy being put into this in india. it's happened only in kenya, the only developing country that has this digital currency. and now that india sees that it has happened in one place they're trying to clear out the regulations and get it going. >> and how does it work in kenya. you can use your cell phone and send money to other people like a relative that's out in the rural area. or if you go into a store and buy something you can do that on the cell phone. >> rose: and take the cell phone in to do things, buy

products or whatever. >> exactly so it makes all these financial issues, the fees to move money around to have loans of various types t makes it a lot simpler when you are not having to handle paper currency. >> rose: i mean how do they view you over there in india? >> well, they are always very nice. >> rose: well, i know that but do they have a name for you, are you just bill gates, are you our great friend bill gates. >> i wouldn't say it is so much me personally but-- . >> rose: the fact that the foundation has through its projects gained credibility, that we're not in there for a big press conference. we're not just going to go for a few years and then leave. we're willing to admit mistakes, programs that don't go very well. we really do give credit to partners. so we've developed enough commitment that is evident to people there that we can actually, you know, sit down and talk with any parts of

the government or other partners and get things done. we have worked closely with a few states. a few other states, the new chief minister noticed that and so we are actually starting something in what is the toughest part of india. >> rose: the place of the most extreme poverty. >> that's right. and it's 200 million people. it's hard to believe a single state. >> rose: as big as the united states. >> in india would be the fifth biggest country in the world. >> rose: and the poverty comes from simply no -- >> it's very agriculturial oriented. and the farming productivity is not very high. and just the density of the people, you're trying to feed 200 million people on a reasonably small piece of land. >> rose: agriculture has become one of your interests. >> i'm trying to learn about it. it's a place where scientific innovation can make a huge difference. if you get rid of plant diseases. if you double productivity. it makes all the difference in the world in terms of

children's nutrition. >> you met some women that are raising their children i think in terms of the slums. what did you feel about the empowerment of women. >> well, the key thing we're trying to help with is making sure that women who want reproductive health tool, that they have access to them. and was's fascinating is that if you are in the upper half the wealth, if you want a certain number of children, you have access. you end up getting what you want. if you are in the bottom half on average you have more than one more child then you intended to have, and it just means that the access to the tools, the education hasn't been there. and so getting that out there is a challenge. i went into the slums to talk to women about how they thought about that. how did they see the options, who would come to talk to them. what fears did they have. and it was very educational. >> . >> rose: what go they say?

>> well, for some of the women, sterilization is forbidden religiously. and you know so that's off the table even though historically the indian government has made that available. you know, that doesn't work. they showed a lot of enthusiasm for having choice. they really wanted women to come and talk to them in a very private and confidential way and-- so we're doing pilots that we hope the government will take on where you have lots of these women community health workers go out and talk to them. and given a set of choices it looked like a lot of them would get-- be way better off, be able to choose voluntarily to have one less child. >> rose: what is the state of philanthropy? >> well, it's coming along. every country is kind of different. this is one of the areas the u.s. by many measures is the most generous. even if you take out religious giving and just

take social service giving, the u.s. would score as number one. and that's not just wealthy people giving. that's very much broad based generosity. and so other countries have some tradition. some of the tech successful people like osamm premgee is a real leader, doing a lot of schools. >> rose: he has been doing that for a while. >> yeah, he has really been great. and we had a group of people sit and talk about what is the role of philanthropy versus government. you don't want to feel like you're just replacing government because that's too big. you want to feel like you're being catalytic and showing government how to spend their money better. you can pick things that will make a huge difference. it is a good discussion. and i expect fill an throne in india, particularly as they get more and more wealthy people t will grow

quite dramatically. >> are they interested in giving pledge. >> they will go their own way. i doubt they will do a pledge type thing. when are you in an early stage just getting all the philanthropists together on a base toys talk about what has worked what hasn't worked where they should collaboration-- collaborate, the commitment was to have an annual event so i was superhappy and they're driving all that. i will just be an invited guest. >> rose: let me talk about polio and also talk about malaria and where we are. i mean as you and i have talked about before, when awe nounced that you were going to focus most of all on polio eradication a lot of people, some stepped forward to say aren't there bigger problems. and you basically said this is one where i can make a difference. and we can eradicate polio. how are we doing on that score? >> well, the big good news is the india elimination. where their last case was in january 2011. and they've stayed polio free. we have three countries

left. three tough ones, pan stand and afghanistan so those are the two in asia. and then in africa it's nigeria. and you know, they should be doable. india was just as hard as they should be. so with the right political commitment, a little bit of innovation in the tools, i feel quite confident we'll get it done it is the thing i spend the most time on and making sure there's enough money for it. making sure we're trying out new things. it's hard work. >> rose: but the reason you spend the most time because you want to do something where you can actually believe you have accomplished your purpose or is it deeper and broader than that? >> well, the world has invested a lot in polio eradication. and been reasonably successful? >> well, if we stop the effort, then it will spread back to the other country. >> rose: so you have to eliminate. >> we're in a very precar precare-- precar yution situation where you either get it to zero or you accept

the fact that you will go back to hundreds of thousands of kids getting paralyzed every year. so if we knew we were going to give up, then we wasted a lot of money a lot of time a lot of credibility. if we can take the next two, three years and get it right, then the payoff is really quite phenomenal. and i think india helped a lot for people to see that even in the toughest places this can be donement now each of these countries remaining, you know, have a little bit more unrest than india had. they have less children in total. and you know so i am a big believer. it is a worthy top priority because once you spend the money, you don't have to spend any more. >> exactly. >> in a value analysis does something suffer because you're focused on polio? >> well, the foundation has finity resources. >> rose: backly. >> and the global health community as a whole if you

take all the foreign aid that gets spent on health, that's a finity amount of money. ideally a growing pool but there's a lot of uncertainty about this. no, i don't think i question that polio is a good priority. because we use polio to get the regular imization, the normal vaccines. we use that to build that system. so the legacy of success here will be very high rates of immunization against all diseases in these remaining tough countries. >> rose: today you hear in new york and you went to see some scientists over rockefeller about mosquitos. which is how you spent your time in part. >> it's exciting. >> rose: exactly so:is it exciting today. what was interesting about today's meeting just to give everybody a sense of what you add to your life. >> well, richard axel who is-- . >> rose: nobel laureate. >> right, has done some brilliant work with some collaborators on how mosquitoes smell things.

and once you understand that mechanism then you can create something and try a bunch of chemicals and see what interferes with their smell. and if you got something that was really cheap, easy to apply, then you could make it so that people wouldn't be bitten. and if you add that together with the bed nets and some other tools, the idea is that you could eliminate malaria in various areas. and so it is innovative work, getting a new insecticide out and approved is five or six year's work. but this is brilliant science that is going to give us a new tool in the fight against malaria. >> rose: are you encouraging that by fill an thropic contribution. >> yeah, we fund most of this research. >> rose: so when you look at malaria, can we rad kate malaria. >> eventually. >> rose: eventually is how many years? >> i think-- we keep modelling and looking at perspective tool,, better drugs, vaccinesing things

like this. repellent. and i think some time in the next ten years we'll have the tools to go out and really shrink the malaria map. now it still could be 20, 25 years before we get the entire disease done. but we'll be able to cut the numbers a lot. so the big prooirt right now is to use the tools we have which are largely bed nets and to invent two or three additional tools that will-- . >> rose: like the one you were looking into today. >> exactly. the repellent, we looked at the modelling, would be a very, very helpful tool. >> rose: what are you doing for hiv virus. >> hiv the dream is still a vaccine. and one approach for that, so-called anti-bodies, a that are now, they are finding ones that are so powerful that they really look like they could block the disease is so how do you get those into humans. how do you get humans to produce it. we still have some work to do there.

but i think that science has gone better than we would have expected. again, on that one, you know t may be a decade before we have the magic tools to really, really cut the numbers. >> rose: did you have what you now have, this fascination and love for science? >> and i'm taking computer science and leaving it out, for a while. i mean was this something that was in you, you as a kid interested in science. >> absolutely. >> rose: across-the-board. >> across-the-board. and in my 20s and 30s, during the creation and in my hyperfocus on microsoft, i didn't get-- i read a little bit of science. but little bit i had to know one thing super, superwell. and so i have been able to broaden my being up to date on science, science medium with great scientists as part of this foundation work. and that's a real pleasure. >> that is an interesting idea. just stay with that for a second. you said in order to do what

did you with microsoft you had to what, you just had to, as you once said to me, you just had to have a focus on that at all times and other things suffered. is that simply the price of building a company like microsoft? >> i think its world's best companies are built by fanatics. and when are you in your 20s and 30s, being fanatical becomes-- at least came pretty naturally to me. >> rose: you didn't think there was another way. >> no, i wanted to let everybody have cool software and so i didn't feel that bad that that is what i was doing. i think now in my 50s, this way of operating, where i'm backing a lot of these great scientists is what, you know s the most natural for me. so i'm very-- . >> rose: most natural meaning most in comparison to -- >> trying to be fanatical about one thing, at this point in time so what i did in my 20s and 30s was a great fit for that time period. >> rose: i -- and i'm not one of those although i asked you before to compare

one with the other. however malcolm gladwell was recently quoted and who wrote out lies and other books that i'm sure you know about and have read. basically said that you know, a hundred years, he said 50, 50 years from now bill gates is going to be known as a philanthropist, not as the founder of microsoft. and there willing statues around the world to him. and he said steve jobs who you admired for what he did in building app legal not be known, hardly, 50 years from now. meaning, the focus on philanthropy has a different resonance in terms of how history putses you. >> well, i don't think anybody does the work they do based on how they're going to be remembered. >> rose: of course not. >> steve jobs did phenomenal work, both you know when i partnered with him. when microsoft competed with him. and you know, that deserves to be remembered as something quite incredible.

you know, i, i love my present work but i really can't distinguish it, you know, in terms of contribution or importance. >> rose: and i didn't ask that question, as you know. but so back, i'm interested too, we'll get back to philanthropy too and health and other broader international issues. but help me understand what it takes to build a microsoft or to build an apple or to build a facebook. and in-terms of what it is that you and mark and steve have. >> well n each of those cases you had people who were quite fanatical about-- . >> rose: what does fanatical mean? >> worked day and night. sort of you know, don't worry about the possibility of failure. every setback is just something to work a little bit harder at doing. and you really know what you're trying to achieve. and you're going to hire the best people and you're going to change your strategy

until you can get that to happen. >> rose: in your mind you were trying to achieve what? >> oh, the magic of software, being available to everybody, both in their work and at home. >> rose: the magic because there is just what you wanted to do or because you knew that if you did that you would be the world's richest man? >> no, no, no. actually we didn't think we would be worth that much money because we had this sort of high volume. >> rose: you mean you and paul. >> paul and i or any of us welch had this high volume low price approach. eventually the volumes got big enough that the numbers shot up very significant. but you know, software is kind of a tool to take human creativity, human's desire to reach out to other people. software is kind of a multiplier on what humans are good at and so when you thought about that, it was going to be so exciting. and it's still unfolding today, you know what does software mean for education watch. does it mean for health care. those journeys are very much at the beginning. >> rose: and if their

infancy. >> absolutely. >> rose: and so how do you put in, factor into that sort of the applications, you know, the fact that we've had this extraordinary explosion in applications for tablets, especially. >> well, there's more applications for personal computers than for anything else. you know, the idea that you enable a third party software industry to write lots of applications, that was the original mooix soft view and the idea that you reach out to them, give them tools, make it easy for them to write software. that is the play book that allowed ms dos and windows to be successful it that is a playbook that others have rightfully copied in terms of as they have come up with successful platforms. but the first time people got the importance of a platform, was seeing how microsoft took that and made it a reality with windows and people are like whoa, you know, that's pretty powerful. >> rose: but that you opened, you provided software in

which as you mentioned, ms dos and others, and windows, and which other people could write software for. and it would not have been what it was without that. >> in those days we didn't charge them any money. we didn't force them to sell through our store or anything it was more flexible than it is today. but it, did-- the wol when you hear the word developer conference, software developer kit, those are all things that were part and parcel of the unique way it was done with ms dos. >> if you had it to do over knowing what you know now, would you have vertically integrated the way that steve jobs did? >> i think-- . >> rose: on software. >> types of products. >> when you get to big changes where you've got to reimagine the form factor, then kind of this end-to-end design can really set off a new form factor. as you get into it and you say some people want them large, some people want them

really inexpensive, there is a variety to having to reach ecosystem. so i actually believe you can have the best of both worlds am you can have a rich ecosystem of manufacturers. and you can have a few signature deslices that show off, you know, wow, what's the difference between a tablet and a pc in the case of the recent microsoft work which is very exciting. it completely blurs the idea of you don't have to make a compromise. you can have everything you like about a tablet and everything you like about a pc all in one device. so that should change the way people look at things. >> rose: here's what is interesting to me and i don't quite know all the facts about this but i know you well and i know steve jobs. it is this notion of you thought about a tablet. and you thought about a touch system. probably as early if not earlier than steve jobs. >> way too early. >> rose: that was a problem, you were way too early or the problem was something else. >> no, well-- it, you know, i think a few things could have been done differently

to get to critical mass. what you see are these phenomenon that if you get a device of critical mass then you get applications written to take advantage of that. then you get volume in the hardware so you can bring the price down. and so what you see is you could have something that was almost good enough, almost good enough that is forgotten for all time and then the thing that just crossed that threshold, even though it came later, you know, goes up in, and is gigantic. >> rose: but that still doesn't answer my question of how come he was able to cross the threshold and you weren't? >> well n that case he did some things better than i did. >> rose: like what? >> oh, his timing in terms of you know when it came out, the engineering work, just the package that was put together. the tablets we had done before, weren't you know as thin and-- . >> rose: pretty. >> they weren't as attractive as what came along. now you know microsoft has

something that may change the rules again. >> rose: there's one difference in what surface does. basically what steve said was in a-- what is difference about surface according to the press is that it can be to the only a receiving tablet but also a cleative tablet. you can use it to create things from it. >> that's right. >> rose: and the argument was you can't do that as well. >> you can't, no, that is absolutely right. that's why the pc category and the tablet category have been separate. and here you have something that fuses the best of both. >> rose: what does that mean for the pc? >> that it's the best-- it gets the benefits of being a tablet. >> rose: but if the surface works really well is that going to eliminate people wanting to have a pc? >> well, what ever you call surface, they will want to have it. we'll call it a windows 8 device. when you take two device categories that have been separate and you merge them together, there is always the question of which name

survives. because the pc has been the superset t has had the breadth of applications, you know, it has a keyboard and other types of rich input, maybe we'll call the resulting thing a pc. maybe we need a new term. maybe they'll just call it, them surface like devices. >> rose: go you believe that apple has to change and apple has to create some thing that will have the functionality of what you are suggesting surface does and using software, windows, or whatever it is. >> i think it's premature to ago like that has been decided in the marketplace. i certainly think that is a strong possibility. and my bias is that yes, this is a seminal event of taking the best of the two worlds and bringing them together. it's a-- it's a wonderful thing. you know, i can't wait until it is shifting and everybody can sit and play with it. because that's the only way that you can understand what wer's trying to say about it. >> rose: has it been hard

for you to watch the enormous success of apple? >> absolutely not. >> rose: not at all, not the fact that they beat you. >> you know, the fact that of all software companies were doing poorly and what was really important was some other nonsoftware related thing, then that would be contrary to the original vision i had that hey, software is important. the fact that the most exciting stuff in the world being done is being done by companies that are deeply software companies, google, apple, microsoft, facebook, that is amazing. and yes, these companies should jostle against each other, compete, you know, doing a better search than google. can we do a better tablet than apple. that is a fantastic thing. and you know i'm not starving. and the brilliance of each company spurring the over one on this is a very positive thing. >> rose: so what do you

think of the facebook ipo? >> well, you know, i took microsoft public in 1986. >> rose: in a different way. >> i'm sorry. >> rose: was it a different way, you took it public. >> well, people didn't realize how important software would be at that point. and so our stock over a period of about 14 years mostly went up for 14 years. and that's kind of fun when that's going on. then when we got to 2,000, 2001 the whole tech sector was overvalue. and then for the first time we experienced the stock going down. mark is precocious in every way. he got to 100 billion valuation faster and he got to, you know, realizing once are you public your stock price is going to go up and down. and that's a great thing t will help that company become more mature. i think facebook is a very important company. i think they have a very important product.

i'm kind of a bit biased because microsoft partners with them. >> rose: how many years ago did you make that investment in facebook. >> oh, that's not the important part. i mean steve bouts-- bought-- i wasn't art of that. steve bought on behalf of microsoft a faw percent of the company. but the key thing more strategic than that is that as we are making binge innovative we work with facebook and we're able to share information so they, they see google as a competitor. we see google as a competitor and are doing a lot of innovation that brings together the strength of the two companies. >> rose: so if you look at apple and you look at google and you look at amazon and you look at facebook, these are-- and you look at microsoft, these are the giants that are going to decide the future. and what's the goal. what will be the golden ring for these companies? >> well, in the end it's always about the applications, you know, can kids learn in a fun way. can you track your health and keep yourself healthier.

can you stay in touch with your relatives and the people you care about in a neat way. at the end of the day it's that application. we're seeing an education now, another wave of people trying to take horses and make them interactive and get lots of people to try and use those things. making the device more natural, having it work with your tv set, your phone, that's all to get these really key applications to work well. >> rose: have you for a moment, for a moment thought about i'm going to go back. i miss the things i want to do, it's become even more exciting. i'm going back to microsoft not once a pont but every day. >> no. i put time into microsoft and i couldn't be more proud of the work they've done with windows 8 and now this, the surface. but my focus is on the foundation. what's going on in global health. what we're trying to do in

education. you know, i am trying to learn about that. i feel like in terms of bringing the pieces together the right innovation, the system thinking, that you know i'm playing the role that is most important. >> rose: the role you define for yourself. let's leave philanthropy outside for a second. what role do you play, are you a sounding board for steve and his team. what is your role there? >> there are new projects that i get to suggest that they work on. and a number of those have been staffed and are moving along. >> rose: what excites you then? >> oh, i think that the way we organize information we're just at the beginning. think of the memories your family memories and how you go back and review those things. think of the white board in the office and say you know, why can't i just walk up to it and when i start to scribble ideas it helps organize those, retrieve things. i can go back an look at

what i did. i can connect up to some other person's quite board. we are just really at the beginning of this digitally empowered way of doing things. and so i get to have a few projects that i promote. and you know, they're actually very nice to me and listening and taking some of them on. >> rose: how nice of them to do that. >> yeah. >> rose: bill, be nice to him, boys. there is also, you like and admire and believe that facebook has a lead because of its software. >> oh, they have a unique service. if you look at the minutes used and the way they've evolved it very quickly, you know, somebody can argue about exactly what it's worth but it's worth a lot. it's an enduring piece of work. >> and google has its same kind of advantage in search. >> well, on that one my bias is very, very strong, that people ought to try binge. >> rose: i know that you

bias but you can. what is the limitation -- >> well, clearly i've been involved in the decision of microsoft to invest billions in it. and i'm very pleased with the work that's been done. now you know if you take the logo off and you test it now, binge wins. but can you get people-- . >> rose: i don't know, tell me how. >> it is a very hard problem. >> rose: because? brand -- >> everybody, google was the best and people got very used to using it. and it's not, it's not terrible or anything. and so you know, are people willing in their mind-set to think oh, okay, now there's another search engine that i ought to try out. that will take some really good marketing and explaining the value proposition. it's kind of a novell problem. >> rose: what would have been the advantage of google, i mean of microsoft and yahoo! coming together? >> well, the key thing that

we were looking at there was the search traffic. because the more traffic you have, the more you can learn. and so the key thing we wanted from yahoo! that we looked at buying the company. this is several years ago, maybe three, four years ago. we got through a big business deal we did with them where their search traffic goes to binge and binge has that informations. >> rose: so you ended up with all the advantages you would have had. >> with the key one. the one that really was necessary. >> rose: to benefit new search reasons right. >> back to philanthropy. let's assume that you can look ahead to your last day on earth. your last day. and it's not a bad day because you know you're not sick and you're not in pain and you have just had this great life. what do you want to accomplish? what do you want to be said then. i mean how do you see your own future as to what it is, the way for you to spend and the smartest way for you to spend your time? and with specific goals.

>> yeah. i would have some very specific things. you know, for example, rights now 8 million children a year die under the age of five. down from, it was about 20 million in 1960. so we're way, way down. >> rose: because of vaccinations. >> primarily because of vaccinations. the fact that the world is richer, people have better nutrition is part but over half is vaccinations. just the elimination of small pox alone is several million of that reduction. reduction in measles is several million of that. so you know, if i get to live a reasonable period of time, that should be below 2 million a year. now that's going to take some big advances. >> rose: so from 8 million to 2 million in your lifetime. >> absolutesly. i will be very disappointsed if we can't do that. >> rose: okay, that's one. >> in education, kids should be empowered to pursue their curiosity. and they should be able to see,ogue, what do i understand wa, do i not understand. help explain to me in a way

that works for my way of learning and what i know and what i am interested in. explain mathematics. explain history, explain sciencement we should have tools of learning that allow every one to pursue their full curiosity, their full potential. >> rose: spend like an hour or two a day in pursuit of learning something. >> that's right. what other people spend a lot of people watching tv in general, i spend on learning things. and it's because that's very been reinforced for me over the years. >> rose: reinforced meaning the results of it have been cleared. what it adds to your own satisfaction of life and what accomplishments you can make because of it. >> exactly. so i-- defining exactly this breakthrough in education that i would like to achieve, i agree it's a little harder to define. >> rose: well try. >> but in some ways it's even more dramatic. when you are curious about something you should be encouraged in that. and no one should sit around and say oh i'm terrible at

math and i don't think i need math. we:created too many bad experiences that has a ton of people feeling that way. a lot of adults. and so education, if we can fix that, what that means that both at an individual level and a society level would be really dramatic. >> rose: okay. that's two. >> yeah, well. >> keep going i want to know. so one is childhood death on an annual basis, two is education. three. >> well, three the whole area of food, kids getting enough nutrition. farmers who have small plots being able to grow enough, the world not ending up with shortages of food as the population goes up. >> rose: is that because we have no organization to do this because we have the know how or is it something else. >> we just need to keep investing in the science here. and. >> the rockefeller foundation did that a long time ago. >> what they did is phenomenal. and there are hundreds of millions of people alive today because of the green revolution that they helped foster. >> what is it today.

>> just call it green revolution two. >> okay. and this one we are just totally in their foot steps. now it's new science to get the productivity up to these higher levels and you have some headwinds with the climate change, the heat, the water and those things but it can be done with great innovation, to have enough that kids arbts mall nourished an the world as a whole doesn't have food shortage. >> have you changed your philosophy about the market, about the way the world works? about some fundamental assumptions that you had. >> well, the market is the most powerful tool we've ever come up with. the limitations of the market, they're really two that are always tryinging. one is that you underinvest in innovation because the risk only gets a small part of what might be possible. and so there's tons of the amount of put into innovation is lower than it should be. and the second is that for poor people the market does

less than it should. and when you talk about innovation. >> explain that for me. for poor people-- the markets does less than it should. >> so et cetera will's say there is a vaccine that has been invent bud it costs more than a poor person could afford. >> rights. >> then that's a system failure. >> rose: exactly. >> that it's not available to them. you compound those two weaknesses when you talk about inventing a malaria vaccine because that's an innovation which is which is always underfunded and innovation for the poorest whose voice -- >> we need a market that rewards a product for the poorest. >> we need to compliment the market with government funded research and philanthropy that takes these areas that the market doesn't do the optimal thing and bring those back into it. >> and each has its role. government has scale. and fill tloonee has seeding. >> innovation, pilots, risk-taking, yes.

>> why can't government do that? >> well, the government isn't like a market where they're going to fund hundreds of scientists and be able to winnow out who is doing things well. research takes many terms of office before it pays off. people are disproportionately hurts when something fails. versus when something succeeds. you know, say sill end ra had-- sol end ra had been a successful people would say the government is brilliant, we should fold our party all together because they were right about it. no, the upside credit, you know, goes elsewhere. but when it goes wrong, then it's like oh, government made those mistakes. so the government role is very important for funding basic research and certain types of incentives to overcome this limitation. but for the poorest, philanthropy is still very necessary. >> rose: if you look at one thing that could do enormously huge things for the world t would be somehow

being able to affect the energy equation. >> the cost of energy, getting the cost of energy down and getting energy to be pollution free, co2 generation 3 is one of those big, big problems that will effect where the world goes. >> rose: and where are we on that? >> well, there is a lot more iq going into this than there was even ten years ago in solar, in wind, in nuclear. there's a lot of different paths to get there. is it going to be one of those, solar wind or nuclear or biosomething. >> yeah, or there is another path which is continuing to use coal and natural gas but somehow taking the co2 out is called carbon he is quest trace where you grab it and liquify it and stick it underground. now every one of these paths has huge problems. you know, solar has cost problems. it's got intermittensee

problems. nuclear has to prove that it's safe. it's got to get its costs right t has to get the waste solution right. they're all major challenges. but i see a lot of innovaters coming in. more in the u.s. than anywhere but on a global basis. and i think if you look 20 years out, we'll have breakthroughs. a lot of breakthroughs. now in meant time you'll have a lot of climate change. the earth will have warmed up. and some of the ecosystems will suffer if this doesn't happen pretty rapidly. >> rose: of all the things with we talked about, what do you worry most for your children? >> you know, i hope that the world's ability to make global decisions, to deal with problem, whether it is global warming or terrorism. >> it's unbelieveable, isn't t around the world here domestically. you can believe with all the things that we are smart about we are so stupid about politics? >> well, that-- if you look

at what is going on in science and you get really optimistic, and then you look at politics and you see some of the gridlock there, there's a real contrast right now and you know so a lot of people are pessimistic because they just look at the political side and they don't see what innovation can bring to the equation. you know, i hope politics changes, having the level of uncertainty we have right now, whether it's about how europe will deal with its financial crisis or how the u.s. will deal with a different views on what the government should spend on, how taxation should be done, you know, i hope we get surprised because those things do slow down the speed of innovation. >> do you think they will continue to kick the can down the road or do you think when the hangman'ses into tightens they will make the right decision? >> well, i'm not a good predictor of these things.

i thought the debt ceiling thing would kind of force something. and what they did with the sequestration. they put a lot of pressure on themselves and said of course, that's just their to show you that we're serious about coming up with a compromise. and then no compromise was arrived at. and so people who have known a lot more about politics should speculate about that. i, you know, i hope that some middle ground is found because you really want to be able to plan ahead. and if they are going to change scholarships, you know, there are kids who need to have a sense about, are they going to be i believe to get a scholarship or not. just having some sudden change would be a problem. >> rose: you know the highest levels of power and financial success and yet at the same time you have seen, because you've made it your business to see, how all of that has been denied to all

of us, some of us who are all equal in the end, each human life is the same. what has it done to you. how has it impacted on new. >> well, it's given me a real sense of urgency about the work we do. but the fact we got this positive trend that, you know, whenever you go and see a country that is in tough shape you can say wow, ten yearsing two was even worse, 20 years ago it was even worse. and it makes you want to bring scientists to see the problem and you know think about okay, how can these people get their dairy to market, you know, there must be a cheap solution for this. or this disease, let's really you know bring an end to this. overwhelmingly i come away positive because i get to see scientists, rockefeller universities, scientists in china doing good work. >> rose: so you have a shot at looking at the future. >> right. and i can see that even if a five to ten year time frame whether it's it productses,

whether it's vaccinations, whether it's new things that will come out in the energy realm, i see that we're going to be making a lot of progress there. and i believe that we'll be able to take advantage of that. that is the political decisions that surround all of that, that we will see it through. >> so on june 25, 2012 bill gates is optimistic. >> absolutely. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> thank you. >> rose: bill gates for the hour. thank you for joining us. see you next time captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org