"Trying to solve some problems like Malaria, malnutrition through philanthropy": Bill Gates

New Delhi [India], February 29 : Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates on Thursday said that he always knew that he would have to learn how to be a philanthropist and has been lucky that his company was successful because, due to the wealth generated from it, he was able to find things like vaccines, malaria or malnutrition.
In an interview with ANI, Bill Gates mentioned that he lets his kids have some money to be comfortable but he doesn't need money for his own spending.
"Well, you know, I'll let my kids have some money so that they're comfortable. But, I don't need the money for my own spending and I think, having a limited amount be inherited means that the rest of it's available to give back to society and try to improve things as much as possible. You know, I'm very lucky that Microsoft was so successful. It generated gigantic wealth and I was able to find things like vaccines or malaria or malnutrition that would not be solved without philanthropy. That is, you know, people are malnourished. It's not a big enough market that, you know, companies were responding to that. And so, through partnerships with governments, I see a path to really eliminate a lot of these awful problems," he told ANI.
Responding to question that at what point in his life did he felt that making money, being wealthy, is not holding that much significance as it did, Bill Gates said that he has never been in what you call 'tough circumstances'.
"Well, when I started, I was in an upper middle-class family, so I've never been in what you'd call tough circumstances. My parents sent me to a great private school. When I dropped out of Harvard, I could have gone back at any time and as soon as Microsoft was successful, I wasn't going to spend that money because I was working all the time and that was my big focus. So I always knew that I would have to learn how to be a philanthropist. I didn't really figure it out until the year 2000, and that's when I created the Gates Foundation, and it became the largest in the world," Gates said.
Further, talking about the Artifical Intelligence, Gates asserted that in India, there will be a lot of fantastic leadership work in AI.
"Well, there's a lot of fantastic AI work going on in this country. You have innovators like Nandan Nilekani who's taking all that digital work and saying, OK, how does AI make that even better? You have groups like Wadhwani. You have the IIT groups that are very state of the art. In India, there will be a lot of fantastic leadership work in AI here in India. When it's helping the poorest in areas like health and agriculture, our foundation will be proud to help shape that and support it," he added.
Talking about his friendship with Investor Warren Buffett, Bill Gates said that his friendship with him is of 30 years, and they never had much overlap in their businesses.
"I've been friends with Warren for a long time, over 30 years. And we really never had much overlap in our businesses. He's an investor, I'm a technologist. But we had a very similar view of the world. We loved talking to each other. I talked to Warren many times a month about all the different things going on or to decide at one point. Although it was a complete surprise to me, to funnel some of his generosity through the Gates Foundation. So that's allowed us to be even more ambitious. But our friendship is basically independent of that," Gates said.