Top 3 Global Threats by Bill Gates
Within the framework of our Crisis Management Lab our team, Emergency Squad, that consists of fourteen people, was tasked with finding what could be the most basic and threatening changes for the future through important organizations and personalities. Our team took over Bill Gates and looked through his various interviews, articles and excerpts with his views to see his opinion and predictions on the upcoming threats. We also watched “The Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates” on Netflix. After gathering some of the threats, we discussed about them as a team, and came up with the most important ones: Climate change, Bioterrorism and Artificial Intelligence.
As a team we took over Bill Gates. However, we did not deal with Gates as a co-founder and Microsoft CEO, but with Gates as a Co-Chair and Trustee of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was founded in 2000 and is a merger of William H. Gates Foundation and Gates Learning Foundation. Since then it has dealt with various global issues such as gender equality, global health, global development, global growth & opportunity, global policy & advocacy and various US programs.
The aim of the Foundation is to offer to society and make every person’s lives healthy and productive and for this reason it is almost all over the world. The Foundation funds various research teams and has already accomplished a lot; It has managed to find the vaccine for poliomyelitis, make a significant contribution to COVID-19 vaccine research, find implementable solutions for hygiene in developing countries, contribute to environmental protection and many more. Therefore, from the perspective of the institution, we recorded the threats that future holds.
Our Top 3
The most significant threats Bill Gates mentioned were artificial intelligence, climate change and bioterrorism. Artificial intelligence or AI is defined as machines or computers that mimic “cognitive” functions, which are associated with the human mind, such as “learning” and “problem solving”. Bill Gates seems to be very concerned about the utilization of AI in weapon systems. The use may differ from a speech synthesis targeting impersonation to automated hacking. It can also be the artificial analysis of human behavior or the systematic interpretation of moods and beliefs aiming to manipulate. Concerning physical weapons, they will be replaced by swarms of micro-drones etc. Bill Gates also mentioned the goals of AI in the future world, which are the reasoning, the planning, the perception, the knowledge representation, the ability to move or to manipulate objects, the process of natural language processing and lastly, learning.
Additionally, referring to climate change, Bill Gates noted these statements: “And yet now, by 2050, if we don’t get to zero, the temperature rise will be so damaging that life will actually get worse for humans and most of the natural ecosystems.”. He also noticed that solving climate change would be “the most amazing thing humanity has ever done”. Furthermore, he said “We’ve never made a transition like we’re talking about doing in the next 30 years. There is no precedent for this”. Some of the reasons and concepts of understanding the climate change, according to the co-founder of Microsoft, are the 51 billion tons of greenhouse gasses, that are added to the atmosphere each year, the making of things like cement and steel, that is more of a culprit than cars or jets, the fact that it takes 5000 gigawatts to power the world, the fact that some power sources take up more space and lastly, that it all comes back to money.
Bill Gates believes that to prevent the planet from getting substantially warmer, we need breakthroughs in how we make things, grow food, and move people and goods — not just how we power our homes and cars. He also noted the grand challenges in stopping the climate change, which are cited in percentages as follows: Electricity (25%), Agriculture (24%), Manufacturing (21%), Transportation (14%) and Buildings (6%).
The last concern that Gates has is Bioterrorism. Bioterrorism is defined as a release of biological agents or toxins that affect human beings, animals, or plants with the intent to harm or intimidate. At a TED Talk in 2015 he mentioned: “(It is) bioterrorism, that somebody who wants to cause damage could engineer a virus, and so that means the chance running into this is more than just the naturally caused epidemics like the current one.” Also, at the “Ask Me Anything” session at Reddit 2017 he said: “I am concerned about biological tools that could be used by a bioterrorist. However, the same tools can be used for good things as well.” His concerns were basically based at the fact that a genetically engineered virus is easier to make and could kill more people than nuclear weapons — and yet no country on Earth is ready for the threat. As a result of Bioterrorism, he said, that the next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus … or a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu. And finally, he supported that advances in biotechnology, new vaccines and drugs could help prevent epidemics spreading out of control. “Most of the things we need to do to protect against a naturally occurring pandemic are the same things we must prepare for an intentional biological attack”. So, that is why Gates believes that Bioterrorism is a big threat that could cause real issues in the future.
Debate
During the session, one representative of each team was called to discuss further into it. In our case, Celia was the one to represent our team. Now the question was, “if we were a member of the European congress, in which threat we would invest money?”. The threats were a) climate change, b)A.I. c) cyberattacks, d) global economy, e) pandemic and f) mental health. Most of the students supported mental health as a priority due to the pandemic and the quarantine, that caused mental issues to many people, but Mrs Xenou stated that we, as members of the congress, should think in a more holistic way and consider investing on world peace, a matter that highly concerns the European Union.
In conclusion, Climate change, Bioterrorism and Artificial Intelligence are some of the most seriours threats Bill Gates predicted humanity will face. It is not the first time that Gates has dared to predict what may happen in the following months or years. His predictions are usually right, so it is not surprising that many people are attentive to what he says.
Our team:
