Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said it’s a ‘certainty’ the US will experience a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.
During a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’, the American business magnate predicted a financial crisis similar to the 2008 Great Recession, where millions of Americans lost their jobs, will reoccur in the near future.
Despite this worrying statement, the 62-year-old was pretty positive about the whole thing, commending how the country dealt with the 2008 crisis.
In response to the question ‘Do you think in the near future, we will have another financial crisis similar to the one in 2008?’, Bill wrote:
Yes. It is hard to say when but this is a certainty.
Fortunately, we got through that one reasonably well. Warren has talked about this and he understands this area far better than I do.
Despite this prediction of bumps ahead, I am quite optimistic about how innovation and capitalism will improve the situation for humans everywhere.
Fellow business mogul Warren Buffett and Gates are long-time friends, and are both fairly optimistic about the state of the economy.
Buffett has said years of growth ‘certainly lie ahead,’ and ‘most American children are going to live far better than their parents did.’
As well as being asked about the future of the economy, Bill was asked about what needs to be done to ‘ensure everyone has adequate food in the future’.
Bill said:
There is some cool work going on to make meat without using animals which will be far more efficient.
The Foundation is funding research on improving photosynthetic efficiency and the potential there is huge.
If we can get African productivity up then we will be able to feed the world but we need to innovate to help them have much better seeds.
Bill also explained whether it was possible to ‘make the world economy grow without destroying our planet’s resources’, saying:
Yes – essentially most resources don’t get ‘destroyed’. The elements that were here to begin with are still here.
Of course it takes energy to recycle things but I am optimistic we will figure out how to avoid destroying the planet.
The number of babies born has already peaked which will help limit the maximum population size.
The tech genius said the most amazing future technological advance will be ‘when computers can read and understand the text like humans do’, explaining:
Today computers can do simple things like search for specific words but concepts like vacation or career or family are not ‘understood’.
Microsoft and others are working on this to create a helpful assistant. It has always been kind of a holy grail of software particularly now that vision and speech are largely solved.
Another frontier is robotics where the human ability to move and manipulate is amazing and experts disagree on whether it will take just a decade or a lot longer to achieve the equivalent.
So, future financial crisis aside, Bill’s AMA was a very interesting read. I’m not sure if I’m more or less scared for the future after reading it!
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