[imagesource: Flickr]

Bill Gates recently logged onto Reddit for his 11th ‘Ask me anything’ session, answering questions around climate change, artificial intelligence, ethical billionaires and why he was buying up so much agricultural land.

According to GeekWire, The Microsoft founder spent nearly an hour on the site until he ran out of Diet Coke, at which point he said his goodbyes and logged off.

Perhaps he needed an extra kick with Tom Hanks’ “Diet Cokagne” to help him last longer.

Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda, have been on a philanthropic mission since he retired from actively running the tech empire. In recent years, these two billionaires have been sharing their wealth, with Gates stating:

“In terms of the very rich I think they should pay a lot more in taxes and they should give away their wealth over time. It has been very fulfilling for me and is my full time job.”

Here are a few answers to some of Reddit’s persistent questions.

On Technology and AI:

“I am quite impressed with the rate of improvement in AI. I think they will have a huge impact. Thinking of it in the Gates Foundation context we want to have tutors that help kids learn math and stay interested. We want medical help for people in Africa who can’t access a doctor. I still work with Microsoft some so I am following this very closely.”

I still like to play around and code. The last time my code shipped in a Microsoft product was 1985 — so, a long time ago. I can no longer threaten when I think a schedule is too long that ‘I will come in and code it over the weekend.”

On climate and Energy:

“Climate will slow down the progress we make on improving the human condition but I still believe we can avoid a terrible outcome. The pace of innovation is really picking up even though we won’t make the current timelines or avoid going over 1.5.

The key on climate is making the clean products as cheap as the dirty products in every area of emission — planes, concrete, meat etc… This is the only way we can ask all the countries in the world to change. If it costs a lot extra we won’t succeed.”

On healthcare:

“When I saw that kids were dying who could be saved for less than $1000 per life I knew that had to be the top priority for my giving back. There was almost no one funding work on diseases like malaria which was killing over a million kids a year then. We have made progress but it is still 400k and we are committed to get it to zero eventually.”

On why he was buying so much farmland:

“I own less than 1/4000 of the farmland in the US. I have invested in these farms to make them more productive and create more jobs. There isn’t some grand scheme involved – in fact all these decisions are made by a professional investment team. Everything I own will be sold as money moves into the Foundation. In the meantime my investment group tries to invest in productive assets including farmland although that is less than 4% of the total.”

On whether there can be such a thing as ethical billionaires:

“Being rich can easily make you out of touch. The incentive to create new companies is still a good thing I think. Even if taxes go up I still wouldn’t ban anyone from being worth a billion but that is just one opinion. I have been very lucky.”

The world’s favourite nerd did take some time to answer a few less-serious questions, such as what his favourite period in history was (the Victorian Era), what he was currently reading (The Song of the Cell by Sid Mukherjee), and what he was excited about in the near future (being a grandfather, progress in health and climate innovation and helping to shape the AI advances in a positive way).

One of the few billionaires that have managed to avoid major controversy (for the most part), Bill Gates seems to be setting an example to other wealthy founders on ways they can give back to humanity without building phallic rockets to take their mates to almost-space.

Sorry Jeff, spending 20 minutes in Zero-G doesn’t make you an astronaut.

You can read the full Q&A on Reddit.

We only wish he could help Eskom out a little.

[source:geekwire]