STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The other day, photographers captured an image of Bill Gates holding a shovel, while standing in the Wyoming desert. One of the world's richest people was breaking ground for a nuclear power plant. Later, Gates came to Washington for meetings and dropped by our studios. He remains a big influence at Microsoft, the company he once directed, and Gates played a big role in its recent plunge into artificial intelligence.
When he talks about AI, his posture changes - he grows more relaxed and enthused. And as we will hear, there is a connection between AI and that nuclear plant, started by Gates' company, TerraPower. He put a billion dollars of his own money into that project. The plant would have a different technology than current plants, intended to be smaller and cheaper and safer, answering some critics of nuclear power.
BILL GATES: The safety case for this design is incredibly strong, just because of the passive mechanisms involved. People have been talking about it for 60 years, that this is the way these things should work, and...
INSKEEP: Meaning if it breaks down, it just cools off.
GATES: Exactly.
INSKEEP: Something doesn't have to actively happen to cool it off that might break.
GATES: Yeah, there's no high pressure in the reactor - nothing that's pushing to get out, no complex systems that guarantee the safety. The NRC - Nuclear Regulatory Commission - is, you know, the best in the world, and they'll question us and challenge us. And, you know, that's fantastic. That's a lot of what the next six years are all about.
INSKEEP: Let me ask about somebody else you need to persuade, and that is markets - that this makes financial sense. I will pause to note that Sam Altman is promoting and investing in nuclear power and is connected with a company that put its stock on the market, and it immediately fell. There have been other projects that have started who have seemed too expensive and have been canceled in recent years. Can you persuade the markets?
GATES: Well, the current reactors are too expensive. Unlike previous reactors, we're not asking the rate payers in a particular geography to guarantee the costs. You know, that happened, and the utilities involved ended up having to have high prices for a long time, so this reactor - all of the costs of building this are the private company TerraPower, which I'm the biggest investor in, although we have lots of other good investors. And for strategic reasons, the U.S. government is helping with the first-of-the-kind costs - so it's not the rate payers, who should never be on the hook for these complex projects.
INSKEEP: I wonder if you can approach an ordinary investor and say, this is a good risk - it's going to pay off in a reasonable time frame.
GATES: You know, we're not choosing to take this company public because understanding all these issues are very complex. Many of our investors will be strategic investors who want to supply components, or they come from countries like Japan and Korea, where renewables are not as easy because of the geography, and so if they want to go completely green, they, even more than the U.S, will need nuclear to do that.
INSKEEP: As a layman, I have noticed that quite a few people who are big into artificial intelligence are also interested in nuclear power. What is the connection between AI and nuclear?
GATES: Well, I suppose, you know, people who are optimistic about innovation in software and AI, you know, bring that optimism to the other things they do. There is a more direct connection, though, which is that the additional data centers that we'll be building look like they'll be, you know, an additional load - you know, as much as 10% additional load for electricity. And the U.S. hasn't needed much new electricity, but a variety of things, from electric cars and buses to electric heat pumps to heating homes - demand for electricity is going to go up a lot, and now these data centers are adding to that. So the big tech companies are out, you know, looking at, OK, how can they help facilitate more power so that these data centers can serve the exploding AI demand?
INSKEEP: I'm interested about artificial intelligence, if you see it as something that potentially could exacerbate income inequality - something that you, as a philanthropist, would think about.
GATES: You know, in a sense, competition - you know, this is a very, very competitive field. I mean, Google's doing great work, Meta, Amazon, and it's not like there's a limited amount of money for new startups in this area. I mean, you know, Elon just raised 6 billion. There's, like - what? - 300 companies. It's kind of like the internet was in the year 2000, or - so the barriers to entry are very, very low.
INSKEEP: And the other thing about a concentration of power - do you worry about, you know, more money for investors and fewer jobs for ordinary people? Like, they can get this wonderful AI technology, but they actually couldn't - they don't have a job.
GATES: I do worry about that. Most things today, it's a co-pilot - it raises your productivity, but, you know, if you're a support person, say, taking support calls, and you're twice as productive, some companies will take that extra productivity and answer more calls and have more quality of answers. Some companies will...
INSKEEP: Cut the workforce.
GATES: ...Need less people, you know, now freeing up labor to do other things that we know we'd like to have - a class size of 10 or, you know, helping out the elderly in a much better way.
INSKEEP: Bill Gates, it's a pleasure to see you. Thanks for coming by.
GATES: Thank you.
INSKEEP: The Gates Foundation, by the way, is one of many NPR funders, and we cover its founder like anybody else.
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