Gates also emphasized that this is not just an American issue—governments in the United Kingdom and France are having similar discussions—and called for both Washington and Silicon Valley to get their act together. “For tech companies there needs to be some consistency including how governments work with each other. The sooner we modernize the laws the better,” Gates says.
Gates has clarified his stance on Apple vs. FBI a few times already to the media. After a February 23 Financial Times article described Gates as “break[ing] ranks” to be pro-FBI, he went on Bloomberg that same day to clarify his position. “That doesn’t state my view on this,” Gates said in a television interview.
Redditors had a mixed reaction to Gates’s answer, one calling it a “nice non-answer,” while another called it a “very sensible and level-headed stance.”
Gates tackled several other technological questions in the AMA thread, from quantum computing (“There is a chance that within six to 10 years that cloud computing will offer super-computation by using quantum.”) to artificial intelligence (“I share the view of [Tesla CEO Elon] Musk and [theoretical physicist Stephen] Hawking that when a few people control a platform with extreme intelligence, it creates dangers in terms of power and eventually control”).
He also delved into political matters in which his philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have been involved, most interestingly on climate change and the difficulty of starting discourse in the United States. “Politics operates in four-year cycles, and climate change is a challenge that needs decades of work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Gates says. “I am disappointed that the U.S. is where the debate has been the most difficult.”
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