At a time when artificial intelligence and technology come with warnings about job displacement and misuse, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who played a central role in bringing personal computing to the masses, has remained optimistic about the future.
The 69-year-old tech giant has indulged in a series of interviews preceding the launch of Source Code: My Beginnings, his memoir spanning his childhood and the 1970s.
Born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Bill Gates grew up in a middle-upper-class family home with two sisters. His father was a successful lawyer, while his mother was a successful banker and a known philanthropist.
“If you had to pick one person who shaped me and my desire to please and succeed, that is absolutely my mum,” Gates told the Opening Bid podcast .
Gates said his mother had strong values about how her family should succeed and giving back to the community.
This is something Gates has kept alive through his philanthropy in the Gates Foundation, the largest charitable foundation in the world, which held a reported $77 billion in assets in 2023.
“She found me fascinating at some things I was really good at. She found me frustrating, my social skills were slow to develop,” Gates added. “She pushed me to talk to adults. In fact, I learned to talk to adults much better than most kids my own age.”
This ended up being valuable for Gates as he was able to quickly learn from adults and get their advice.
“Sadly, she died in her early sixties, but she got to see Microsoft be pretty successful, but she’s not around for the Gates Foundation,” Gates said.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one of the most prominent men in technology today, has reportedly had a hot and cold relationship with Gates.
Talking to the Independent , Gates revealed that Musk had been “nice to me at times, and mean to me at times.”
Despite this, Gates remains “in awe of the great work” Musk has achieved in his endeavors and claims he will continue to try and work with him “because he’s brilliant, he’s rich, he’s influential.”
One surprise for Gates, however, was how Musk and other tech leaders had embraced the returning President’s political views.
“I’m a little surprised at the variety of political views coming out of Silicon Valley,” said Gates.
“Until about six years ago, other than Peter Thiel, who has a unique set of views that I don’t fully understand, but I don’t think they’re easy to characterize,” he said.
Adding: “I would have said it was a very left-of-center set of people, more like California is in general. So this phenomenon that a lot of people gave big money to Trump, and helped Trump, is a bit of a surprise to me.”
Discussing his wilder younger years, Gates confirmed to the Opening Bid podcast that Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen had given him acid to try when he was a teenager.
“Paul was responsible for all sorts of things,” Gates added. “I mean, my first time I got drunk, the first time I smoked marijuana.”
Gates said that Allen used to enjoy seeing his “zany high energy” and “how it might be influenced.”
However, Gates said he gave that stuff up “pretty quickly because I like my brain to be working.”
Over the past few years, Microsoft has been significantly expanding its investments in AI.
From its multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI in January 2023, to its recent $80 billion allocation to AI development, Microsoft has quickly become a leading player in the industry.
The tech giant, which rose to fame with operating systems, now looks like an extremely different company since its early days.
Gates told the Opening Bid podcast that he was happy with Microsoft’s strong push in AI, but uncertainty remained with the technology.
“I’m thrilled Microsoft is making those investments. But there’s a great deal of uncertainty there,” Gates said.
“In the meantime, the AI stuff, that is improving at a very rapid rate. In a sense, it’s more predictable that over the same three to five years, that will get extremely powerful,” he added.