Melinda Gates speaks on smoothing the shift to digital age
NUSA DUA, INDONESIA >> Instead of destroying jobs and leaving legions of people without work, the digital revolution can open doors to unseen opportunities and industries, but only if everyone has access to the internet and the ability to use it, Melinda Gates said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has joined a global initiative working to ensure frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality will help, not hurt the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.
The effort to build socalled “digital ecosystems” by the Gates Foundationsupported Pathways for Prosperity Commission on Technology and Inclusive Development was showcased at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank last week in Bali, Indonesia.
Among the leaders in the Pathways initiative is Sri Mulyani Indrawati, finance minister in Indonesia, where the “Palapa Ring” project aims to make highquality broadband connections available to 100 million more of its 265 million people across the archipelago.
Some excerpts from the AP’s interview with Melinda Gates in Bali:
AP: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is probably best known for its work in the health sector. Now that you’re also working on building these digital ecosystems, what do you hope your legacy will be in this area?
Gates: I hope we’re always known for the health work. I hope we’re always known for lifting up everybody in the world, the most marginalized. That’s why you see me doing a lot more these days about girls’ empowerment, and about digital.
My concern is, going to conferences these last two years, it became this big echo chamber of, “Oh, robots are going to take all our jobs and AI’s the next big thing.”
Robots aren’t going to take all our jobs . ... I hope the foundation is part of making sure everybody is brought into the digital ecosystem.
AP: It’s been astonishing how quickly the digital adoption has been.
Gates: I’ve been in villages in Africa where
chickens are running around. There’s no electricity. There’s no running water and you hear a cell phone ring. You think, “Wow! Where did that come from and where are they recharging it?”
But it’s not enough. They actually have to get hooked up to the internet and they have to be able to have a digital bank account. I get concerned about women’s literacy, their financial literacy, so I want to make sure we do very specific programming to pull everybody in, including women.