At a Financial Times event Wednesday evening, the paper's editor interviewed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. The two reportedly talked extensively about the economy, robots, Uber, and Silicon Valley. FT Alphaville writer Izabella Kaminska, who often writes about these issues, went on a long tweetstorm after relaying the conversation. With regards to robots, the economy, and logistics, the takeaway seems to be that Gates thinks we're in the fastest period of innovation ever, and it's still unclear how that will affect the economy. But there's still quite a way to go. Robots "will be benign for quite some time," Gates said. The future of work is not in immediate danger — although the outlook is not good for those who have a high school degree or less. Gates was also asked about Uber. He seems to think the real disruption to the driving and logistics industry is not going to come until we have fully driverless cars. That's the "rubicon," he says. Kaminska relays that currently, Gates thinks that Uber "is just a reorganization of labour into a more dynamic form." However, and this is big, Uber does have the biggest research and development budget out there on the driverless vehicle front. And that's to its advantage. Here's the tweetstorm (in reverse-chronological order): Kaminska's tweetstorm about Gates' comments continued on the topics of climate change and philanthropy.
Bill Gates has shown support of Uber saying that the company could be the first company to break into autonomous vehicles because the company has the biggest research and development budget of any other firm investigating the driverless vehicle sector. The CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi, said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday that he believes self-driving cars will become a reality within five years. He went on to express that the real threat to the taxi industry won't happen until fully driverless cars are on the roads.