Name: Bill Gates on an AI bubble and eradicating polio
Uploaded: 2025-12-10T16:09:44.292Z
Duration: 4 min 35 s
Description: At Abu Dhabi Finance Week, the Microsoft Co-Founder and Chair of the Gates Foundation tells CNBC’s Tania Bryer how “deeply profound” AI technology will reshape the world, and how global leaders and organisations including the Gates Foundation have collectively pledged $1.9 billion to eradicate polio for good.

At Abu Dhabi Finance Week, the Microsoft Co-Founder and Chair of the Gates Foundation tells CNBC’s Tania Bryer how “deeply profound” AI technology will reshape the world, and how global leaders and organisations including the Gates Foundation have collectively pledged $1.9 billion to eradicate polio for good.

San Francisco

Bill Gates announced that the Gates Foundation has pledged $1.2 billion as part of a $1.9 billion global effort to eradicate polio, unveiled at Abu Dhabi Finance Week. Gates highlighted the milestone nature of this commitment, emphasizing the progress made and the coalition of international partners involved.

In addition to discussing polio eradication, Gates addressed the current state of artificial intelligence, describing it as the most significant technological development today. He acknowledged concerns about overvaluation in the AI sector but stressed that the technology's profound impact on health, education, and agriculture is undeniable.

Bill Gates on an AI bubble and eradicating polio

Now, the Gates Foundation has pledged $1.2 billion towards the eradication of polio as part of $1.9 billion in commitments by global leaders unveiled at the Abu Dhabi Finance Week. Tania had the chance to speak to Bill Gates and is joining us now with more from that conversation. Tania. Sylvia, thank you so much and hello from Abu Dhabi. That's right, Bill Gates was here at Abu Dhabi Finance Week to announce the pledge $1.9 billion of the eradication of polio along with other global partners. I sat down with him straight afterwards and I asked him why it was such a milestone moment. It's pretty fantastic that we're close to getting rid of polio and once you get to zero then no kid gets paralyzed, you don't have to spend any money vaccinating kids, so the savings accrue for all time. We've only done that with one disease so far, smallpox, that was a long time ago, 1980, so here with polio we've got a group of pledgers. We're in the UAE partly because they're a very generous pledger through the Mohammed bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity and so they made a big commitment, but a lot of other people, Pakistan itself which still is one of the countries that's finishing off polio came, a lot of great pledgers, Mayor Bloomberg has been with us on this journey for a long time, Rotary along with the Gates Foundation is probably the biggest giver to this cause and so it was great to get the visibility for Quest, that even though it's been a little harder than we expected, we are very close. And of course AI is the topic on everyone's lips here as well and I asked Bill Gates if he was building Microsoft now, what would his strategy be with AI? AI is the most important thing going on and throughout the history of Microsoft we always were thinking about okay, when can we make breakthroughs in AI? That digital revolution that created the internet, got everything online, that's the foundation that the AI is coming into. For me personally, now my full-time work is the foundation and so because of my relationship with OpenAI and Microsoft I stay very on top of the latest advances and one of the foundation's goals is to make sure the poorest in the world, the people who never meet a doctor, don't get farming advice, don't have a good tutor, that we're going to have AI free to them in their native language so they can explain their health challenge, they can explain what's going on with their crops and what step they should take. So making sure it isn't a 10 or 20 year leg before those most in need see the benefit, that is a huge priority for us. But are you worried like some that AI is going to be a bubble? AI is only a bubble in the sense that not all of these valuations will end up going up, some of them will go down, but in the sense that behind it is a technology that's deeply profound that will reshape the world, there's not the slightest doubt about that. Does it mean all of these companies with high valuations will all be winners? No, it's going to be hyper competitive, a reasonable percentage of those companies won't be worth that much. So in the sense of some overvaluation, yes. In the sense of is this profound and real and is going to provide all of these benefits including the health, education and agriculture that we're working on, absolutely, nobody should have any doubt about that. Bill Gates there on the so-called AI bubble and of course also talking about the historic pledge $1.9 billion, $1.2 billion of that from the Gates Foundation to eradicate polio for good. That's it from me in Abu Dhabi, Sylvia, over to you. Thank you so much Tania for bringing us that conversation.

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