Return to Transcripts main page

Fareed Zakaria GPS

Interview with Finland's President Alexander Stubb and Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store; Interview with France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot; Interview with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. Interview With Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic; Interview With Gates Foundation Chair Bill Gates. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired September 27, 2026 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:47]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria, coming to you from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on a special U.N. General Assembly edition of GPS, I talked to four key European leaders about how they view a world in flux. First up, the president of Finland and the prime minister of Norway. Both nations share borders with Russia. How do they see the state of the war in Ukraine? I'll ask them.

Then France's foreign minister on how his country is working to free itself and its European partners from relying on what has become an unreliable partner, the United States of America. And Serbia's president explains why his country recently gave a man known as the "Butcher of Bosnia a hero's funeral.

Finally, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. I asked him what scares him about A.I., whether it will increase inequality and what jobs will human beings still be better at?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

As the summit this week demonstrated, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are searching for ways to work together despite the growing rivalry between the two countries. They might take a look at a striking, somewhat unnoticed case of quiet cooperation involving American and Chinese technologies.

By now, the world has heard about the Hugging Face attack in which, in July, OpenAI agents broke into Hugging Face, a leading American A.I. platform. What is less well-known is how this attack ended. Hugging Face said it tried to use A.I. to analyze the incident and respond, but the typical American frontier models refused to help because their safety guardrails couldn't distinguish investigating a cyberattack from carrying one out. So Hugging Face turned to a Chinese model, GLM 5.2, developed by

China's Z.ai, which helped investigators understand the attack. To summarize, an American A.I. broke into an American technology company. To figure out what happened the company ended up using a Chinese A.I.

Or consider what happened with the price of oil. The U.S. has waged a war with Iran, one of the world's leading oil producers. Experts predicted that the price of oil would skyrocket even higher if the war lasted several months, many suggesting it would hit $150 a barrel. But that didn't happen. Why? The single biggest cause is probably that China, for its own reasons, chose to reduce its imports of oil by a staggering four million barrels a day, approximately. If not for that Chinese action, gas prices in the U.S. would be far higher than they are today.

In his excellent new book, "Darwin's Lock," Joshua Cooper Ramo points out that when developing his theory of evolution, Charles Darwin struggled to explain phenomena like altruism or self-sacrifice, using purely competitive zero sum logic. He came to realize that in a merciless environment, species often lock into cooperative arrangements and not as an act of kindness, but because mutual support is the only viable path to fitness.

Something like that characterizes the U.S.-China relationship. These two countries have spent four decades growing within the same economic and technological ecosystem. Supply chains, capital research, manufacturing and markets became intertwined. This is true not just for America, but most countries in the world, which have deep ties with China.

[10:05:01]

In Washington and in parts of Beijing, people talk about a new Cold War between America and China. But the analogy is misplaced. America and the Soviet Union were largely unconnected economically, technologically, culturally. But China and the U.S. are deeply intertwined. And these ties can be severed only at great cost to both sides and the global economy.

Take pharmaceuticals. The nonprofit United States Pharmacopeia finds that roughly 41 percent of the key starting materials used in U.S.- approved medicines are sole sourced from China. According to Brookings the dependance is particularly high in antibiotics and in inputs used for statins, antidepressants and blood pressure medications. FDA data show that as of last year, of the manufacturers that supplied the U.S. market with the key ingredients in any medicine, only about 9 percent were domestic, compared to 22 percent in China and 44 percent in India.

So we're all dependent. We tend to hear survival of the fittest and imagine nature as an endless struggle in which one creature devours another. But evolutionary fitness actually means the ability to adapt successfully to changing conditions. Nature is full not just of competition, but specialization, symbiosis and cooperation.

Ramo applies the insight to international affairs. He does not imagine America and China becoming friends. He expects fierce technological competition, military rivalry and political distrust. But he argues that the two countries have evolved inside the same system to such a degree that attempts by one to weaken the other increasingly ricochet back upon itself. His stark alternatives are coevolution or coextinction.

There's an obvious objection. Interdependence can be weaponized. The United States should worry when China has near monopolies over materials essential to American industry. China also worries about depending on American technology for the chips powering its A.I. revolution, for example. But reducing a set of dependencies in a few areas is very different from a broader decoupling of the world's two largest economies.

A better term than weaponized interdependence might be managed interdependence. It gives up on two fantasies at once. The old idea that more trade automatically produces peace, and the new idea that national security requires severing every connection with a rival. Instead, map the connections. Where dependance creates an unacceptable vulnerability, diversify and build alternatives.

Where economic ties benefit both sides without creating serious security risks, don't destroy them simply to prove toughness. And where the two countries remain deeply connected, build firebreaks so that a conflict in one area doesn't cascade through the entire relationship.

For 30 years, we made one mistake about globalization. We assumed trade would eradicate geopolitics. Now we risk making the opposite mistake. Assuming geopolitics can simply erase the realities of a global, deeply interconnected economy.

Go to FareedZakaria.com for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started.

Since the Russian invasion, Finland and Norway have emerged as staunch supporters of Ukraine. Each signed a bilateral defense agreement with Ukraine, each has given the country billions in aid, and each is involved in diplomatic efforts to end the war. And the war in Ukraine drove Finland, which shares an 830-mile border with Russia, to abandon its historic neutrality and become the 31st member of NATO.

I spoke to the president of Finland, Alexander Stubb, and the prime minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Store, at the Council on Foreign Relations this week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Let's start with the issue that really is must be preoccupying you from a national security point of view, which is the war in Ukraine. It doesn't seem like much is changing on the battlefield. There are some indications recently that actually the Ukrainians have been doing well. On the other hand, the Russians have been able to destroy much of Ukraine's energy infrastructure. And they have these jet shaheeds that seem to be able to go faster and evade the Ukrainian efforts to intercept. How would you read the battle front to begin with?

ALEXANDER STUBB, FINNISH PRESIDENT: Well, I think there's good news and bad news. The good news is that Ukraine is doing better politically, militarily, and financially than they have been doing at any time this year.

[10:10:08]

I'd argue that they've been on top ever since December. On the battlefield, this means that the killing ratio is about one to five, one Ukrainian for, five Russians. It means that since January, Russia has advanced only 900 square kilometers and Ukraine has taken back 800 square kilometers. It means that Ukraine is able to hit long-range targets in terms of oil refineries and logistical centers. This is all good news. So it's pretty much a stalemate.

The bad news, of course, is that winter is coming. And Ukraine right now desperately needs three things. One is air defense, because the ballistic missiles are coming through. Two is energy installments. And three is finances. So, you know, we're working both to support Ukraine as best we can. Together with Jonas and many others. And then on top of that, we try to work with the peace negotiations as well.

ZAKARIA: Prime Minister, the big strategic reality that Ukraine faces economically has been the collapse of American support. American military assistance is essentially down to zero. The Europeans have stepped up extraordinarily. But now Ukraine says it has a $27 billion deficit. And it's quite possible that this will get worse because I was just in Ukraine and the industrial economy has essentially shut down because of the -- because of what President Stubb was saying.

The energy infrastructure has been badly -- damaged badly enough that very few factories, big factories are running. Do you think Europe will be able to do what it takes to support Ukraine?

JONAS GAHR STORE, NORWEGIAN PRIME MINISTER: Well, part of that finance is becoming more and more Northern European. I think that Northern Europeans have stood, you know, the course until now. I think that the way Ukraine is resisting is telling us the following. How do wars end? They end when the warring parties see that, you know, the war is not going to deliver what they went into this and the pain of the war is going to exceed what you can benefit from the war.

I sense that we are getting closer to that point, and that's why I think the U.S., although, you know, I regret that there is not financial support. I think, you know, that's a mistake. But they are critically important to get the diplomacy moving. And then it will be our responsibility to see to it that Europe, which will have to live with the aftermath of this conflict, this is a conflict on our territory. Russia is our neighbor that we can define a security in structure for the future. But that moment has to come sooner than later, that there is a start of the end of this war.

ZAKARIA: President Stubb, you are sometimes called a Trump whisperer for the Europeans. You do have a good personal relationship with him. You talk to the negotiators often. Do you get the sense that there is any real movement on the negotiation side? Again, when I was in Kyiv, the feeling was they were being given the same old offers, that there was no real progress.

STUBB: Well, Jonas and I were I think a week before you. And I think the mood then was rather positive. And we had spoken to the American negotiators a few times before they went in, and right after they came out, and we spoke to President Zelenskyy, was it a week ago, a week and a half ago in Oslo? And we'll see him here this week. I think the fact that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff went to Moscow, that John Ratcliffe went to Moscow, that was significant, and then that the two negotiators went to Kyiv, got the ball rolling.

Does this mean that we're going to get peace immediately? No. But there has to come a point when, you know, the Russians realize that enough is enough and they will not have achieved their goals, which was to basically take over Ukraine, deny its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Thanks to President Stubb and Prime Minister Store. Next on GPS we'll move to another key European nation, France. That country's foreign minister joins me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:18:46]

ZAKARIA: In March of this year, as the world's attention was fixated on the Iran war, France made a striking offer. Speaking in front of a nuclear powered submarine, President Emmanuel Macron announced that his country would expand its nuclear arsenal and increase nuclear cooperation with European allies.

Under the post-1945 order, the American nuclear umbrella protected Europe. But many believe that safety guarantee can no longer be relied upon. Now, nearly a dozen European countries have accepted France's initiative.

For more, I'm joined by France's foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot. I spoke with him this week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Mr. Minister, pleasure to have you on.

JEAN-NOEL BARROT, FRENCH MINISTER FOR EUROPE AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: France has talked about strategic autonomy as a way of being able to withstand what appears to be a less reliable American partnership. But how realistic is that? At the end of the day, your nuclear deterrent, which you are offering in a way to Central and Eastern European countries, is, what, 300 odd missiles? You still need -- for almost any serious American military action you need American logistics.

[10:20:02]

You need HIMARS, you need Patriots. Is this more symbolic than real strategic autonomy?

BARROT: No, no. It is becoming real. It is, of course, the end game, strategic autonomy. But we are making progress. If you look at France, we will have doubled this year our military spending relative to 10 years ago. And we're seeing the same movement in all European countries. Within the European Union, within NATO, there has been a surge in the responsibilities taken by European to ensure their own security.

And this is -- this is done, I must say, in close coordination with American leadership that have told Europeans for a long time now, way before the current administration was in the White House, it was up to the Europeans to take a larger share of the burden. And this is exactly what we're doing.

ZAKARIA: So you assume that this American attitude will outlast Donald Trump?

BARROT: Oh, I think it is indeed something that is somewhat bipartisan. The idea that America should perhaps focus a little bit more on the Pacific and should get the European partners and allies to take more responsibility with respect to the security of the North Atlantic area and also of the European continent. And this is also a time for us to take such a step.

ZAKARIA: All these policies imagine greater European cooperation, and yet the far and away most likely person to become the next president of France who controls all foreign policy and defense policy in France is Marine Le Pen, who is deeply skeptical of Europe, deeply skeptical of further European cooperation, seems somewhat neutral in the Ukraine conflict, maybe even pro-Russian.

Are your policies -- are these policies going to survive if eight months from now there is an election and Marine Le Pen is the next president of France?

BARROT: Well, the story is not written in advance. And for the very reasons that you have highlighted, the distrust by Marine Le Pen of European Union, of the NATO, of Ukraine, this is something that is highly unpopular among the French people who's perfectly aware that E.U., NATO are a way for France to defend its interests and to promote also its values through the European Union. And so it's not -- it's not a done deal. And there will be a very active campaign by other political forces to prevent such an outcome. So --

ZAKARIA: But if it happens, is there a plan B?

BARROT: If -- well, we don't do fiction politics, but it's still a long way. There is a presidential election, but I want to highlight that there will also be a legislative elections following up the presidential election. And in the event where a candidate from either the far-right or the far-left was to be elected president, there would be a surge in electoral participation to prevent either of them to acquire influence and power, to dismantle the influence of France on the European continent.

ZAKARIA: Foreign Minister, pleasure to have you on.

BARROT: Thank you very much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, Serbia's president explains why his country recently gave a man known as the "Butcher of Bosnia" a hero's funeral.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:28:18]

ZAKARIA: Over more than a decade in power, Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic, has reshaped his country's place on the international stage, pursuing closer ties with the West while deepening relations with China and Russia, and attracting major investments. But that impressive balancing act is unfolding alongside a worrying surge in nationalism in Serbia, which is, of course, a country with a violent history of nationalism.

It is also unfolding at a moment of political flux in the country. Vucic has said he will step down as president in order to run for prime minister in parliamentary elections next month. The country's constitution prevents him from running for president for a third consecutive term.

I sat down with him this week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: President Vucic, thank you for joining us. Most people think when they think of Serbia in the western world about the Balkan Wars, about what happened in places like Srebrenica. And there is a hope that Serbia has moved past all that. You just had the funeral of Mladic, who was a convicted war criminal, deeply involved in those massacres. It appears that the government, it provided some planes or some support or received his body.

There are reports that your son attended the funeral. Were you trying to signal a certain degree of acceptance and support for Mladic?

ALEKSANDAR VUCIC, SERBIAN PRESIDENT: No. It's a -- it's not easy to explain it in one minute or two minutes, but I'll do my best. First of all, I don't see anything that we should justify ourselves because we did nothing wrong.

[10:30:00]

Speaking about a place, of course, we had to provide decent and civilized manner an entire logistics for the funeral as we used to do it with all the others. ZAKARIA: Why --

(CROSSTALK)

VUCIC: I'll tell you because there would be no other ways to do it. He used to be a colonel of former Yugoslav army we're obliged -- we're obliged --

ZAKARIA: Every colonel -- every colonel gets a state funeral.

VUCIC: Yes, absolutely. No it was not a state funeral. It was not a state funeral at all. With no state honors. But it was -- the real issue is just -- let me make it very clear to you. They couldn't find my son. He went there because he wanted to go there as a private person. He is not an official of my country. I love him very much, but that's his choice.

And I didn't go. Speaker of the parliament didn't go. Prime minister didn't go. But what actually was an issue? It was something else. It was a number of people. It was the biggest funeral in the last 40 or 50 years organized on Monday, working hours.

And then I have a question for you and for me as well, for all of us, why so many people appear there? Do you really believe that those people are monsters, butchers, to use all these terms? No.

Or they were supportive to a monster, butcher whatever? No. Those people believed in many unjust things that happened to us in the last 20 and 30 years. Because you have never heard of most probably Rasim Delic from Sarajevo. He was convicted criminal and top notch officials of Bosnia and Herzegovina attended his funeral, unlike us.

And none of you have ever heard of him. That was not an issue here on CNN. That was not an issue anywhere else. And this is what people in Serbia can feel it.

Some people were bombing Serbia. Some people were seizing, trying to seize 14 percent of our territory. Some people were convicting only Serbs. But people that were decapitating Serbs were not convicted.

ZAKARIA: But I want you to answer the question --

VUCIC: Speaking about -- speaking about me --

ZAKARIA: You raised it very well which was, why was this the largest funeral in 40 years? There are people who say it's because there has been a Serbian nationalism that has been rising and rising, and that, frankly, politicians like you have encouraged it.

VUCIC: No, not at all. What I was saying to my people, and I'll tell you, I said this publicly, first of all, I went to Srebrenica on 20th anniversary. I bowed my head and I was almost lynched, almost killed over there. No one was accountable for that. No one was responsible for that.

And just two months after I was receiving in Belgrade the leadership of Bosnia and Herzegovina, shaking hands with them and saying, even today I'm going to say, yes, I do regret the fact that so many Bosniaks were killed in Srebrenica. I will always be able to bow my head before the monument or to say how sorry we are and everything else.

The real issue is -- the real issue is that Serbian people feel that international community did many unjust things against our people. But to answer the substance of your question, Serbia will keep peace, stability and tranquility in the region. This is of utmost importance for us.

We were like world champions in number of wars that we participated in 20th century from the Balkan wars, first world war. In the first world war, we lost almost one third of our overall population. In the second world war, we were the only -- from the very beginning, we were the only anti-nazi nation -- oriented nation in that region of the world, and we suffered the most. And we suffer the most.

And today we know the value of peace. And that's why we keep peace. That's why we keep stability. Peace is of utmost importance for us. And I'll tell you why.

We are the fastest growing economy in the region. We are 51 percent of overall western Balkans GDP, 61 percent of FDI attraction, foreign direct investment attraction, in the region, 55 to 56 percent of overall western Balkans export.

We need peace. We need peace. And we'll always be ready to shake hands and to pave the way for peace in the future with all our neighbors, with everybody in the region. And we think it's really of utmost significance for us, not for the others.

[10:35:05]

ZAKARIA: Let me ask you something. People look at what you're doing going from president to prime minister, and they say this is a familiar act. This is what Putin did.

VUCIC: Really. This was done by European Union president Rumen Radev three months ago. But you didn't mention that. Is it true or not, dear Fareed? It is --

ZAKARIA: It is -- it is true. But it shall we say the most famous example is of Putin. Does this mean --

VUCIC: But another -- another way for Alex Stubb. He was the prime minister and he became the president. But it's allowed to all of them and it's forbidden to me.

ZAKARIA: So, you don't view this as a sign of creeping authoritarianism in Serbia?

VUCIC: No, not at all. I'm a democrat and would always like to hear and to see what people think. And without legitimacy, I would be no one. And we'll have a big, very tough race, important election, political race, and we'll see who's going to win. If the other side wins I'm going to congratulate them that very evening. And that's it. That's how democracy function.

ZAKARIA: Mr. President, thank you for joining us.

VUCIC: Thank you very much.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, many predict that AI will deepen inequality around the world. Is there anything we can do about it? Bill Gates, the head of the Gates foundation, thinks there is. He joins me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:41:05]

ZAKARIA: A.I. will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice, that is Bill Gates' warning. And he wants to make sure it turns out to be the former.

His organization, the Gates Foundation, just pledged $1 billion to improve access to A.I. and its benefits to underserved communities around the world. These funds will be used to train A.I. models on local languages, improve health outcomes and agricultural practices, and train people on how to use A.I. effectively. To discuss all this and more, Bill Gates joins me.

Bill, an important announcement and ambitious. But the question I have is, is it a band aid over a fundamentally -- a much larger problem, which is doesn't A.I. inherently drive us towards a kind of massive inequality?

It sort of feels like a little bit like the internet. We ran this experiment. We said it's going to democratize everything. And in many ways it did.

People got access to knowledge, but it did create these massive global monopolies or oligopolies. Isn't A.I. just this on steroids? And you know what people will say, well, you're just trying to put a band aid by helping, you know, $1 billion in the in the midst of this, you know, $30 trillion problem.

BILL GATES, CHAIR, GATES FOUNDATION: A.I. is very different than any previous technology. You know, I'll stick up for the internet and that that's overall been a phenomenal thing.

Sadly, A.I. is much tougher. This is more like an evolutionary event where a new alien species that is going to be smarter than we are has been created. And so all the analogies to, hey, in the past, although there was some displacement, it created jobs and it all worked out in the end. That doesn't apply here, you know?

So, if there's one simple message for me, it's A.I. is utterly different. And don't be complacent thinking that we've faced anything like this. On the upside, you know, when you have A.I. creating new cures and humanoid robots turning out food and building shelter at very low cost.

Once you get through the 20-year transition, if we have control, you could say, you know, that's a world of abundance. You know, what will people do with their time? How will they find meaning? There are challenges, but my focus is how do we get through this 20 years without bio attacks or the job market disruption where some people are still doing OK and many people are not.

ZAKARIA: So let's talk about that 20-year period. And you actually talk about not even a 20-year period, but a 12 to 18-month window. That is, you know, something I've been talking about as well, which is we have a period before the computer essentially writes, you know, the next version of A.I., which then writes the next version of A.I., what they call RSI, where we have some insight into what's going on. We can put controls in.

Is that realistic, given that there are two massive breakneck competitions going on? One is among all these companies that are trying desperately to get ahead. And are they really going to put things in that do have some effect of slowing down the models?

And secondly, the competition with China, where the president of the United States says, I'm not going to do anything because I want us to win against China.

GATES: Yes. I'm not -- the amount of slowing down is not going to be that dramatic. To have a monitoring or policing layer that says, is this being used for a cyberattack? Is it being used for bioterrorism? That can be done.

[10:45:01]

And it's kind of bizarre where you have the industry warning about the downsides of their products, and yet you have the rest of society not caught up to how powerful this is and how different it is. And so, you know, my top level cry is to say all of the academics, all of the think tanks, all of the politicians need to engage both as users, but appreciating that without government engagement including, yes, the U.S., China saying, hey, bioterrorism isn't good for either of us. I hope people haven't lost sight of the fact that a lot of things the U.S. and China can do together are win-win. You know, controlling A.I., top of the list.

ZAKARIA: I find when we talk about A.I. on the program, if you talk about the war in Iran, you talk about, you know, it is much sexier. People are much -- people -- I feel like you're going to -- I worry that we're going to have to have some major event, you know, before people realize just how dangerous this is. And the people closest to the A.I. are the ones the most worried, because they can see that that is likely.

GATES: Well, the likelihood of major cyberattacks that are A.I. enabled that shut down a hospital or electricity, it's very high. And so, the prescription of let's get this policing layer in at least if we've laid the groundwork of what would that look like, and are there some trade-offs that, yes, humanity working together should be able to make, if we have those ideas in place, then perhaps it will take some awful events before we'll really decide, yes, this is very much worth doing. ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, if A.I. is going to get better at doing many things than humans, than what does it leave for human beings to do? I will ask Bill Gates that when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:51:52]

ZAKARIA: And we are back with more of my conversation with the Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates.

Another big thing that your foundation is doing is trying to accelerate drug discovery, make it much faster, help, you know, even the regulators understand how to use A.I. to do it. It feels like the Chinese are also going down that path.

What I worry about, though, is that this is all happening at a time when post COVID public trust in these regulators in science, in all of this has collapsed. I mean, you see this in the vaccine debate. How worried are you about that?

GATES: Well, the U.S. is pretty unique in that, you know, post pandemic fears of vaccines, which has, you know, led now to more measles deaths. Not liking mRNA vaccines. So now the Chinese companies are by far the leaders in that, including you know, they, like others are going to use that for cancer treatment. I mean, it's a really incredible technology.

ZAKARIA: Why do you think we have this level of skepticism about -- it's not just about science. It's about elites. It's about the establishment. It's about anything that feels official in some way, right?

Like, because it's not just a collapse of trust, it's a shift of trust. We don't trust the CDC and the FDA, but we trust all these random internet doctors, right? Or we don't trust the mainstream news media, but we trust Joe Rogan. Like it's a shift of trust away from institutions toward a kind of set of mavericks.

GATES: Well, this idea of populism, that the sense that the elites are, you know, their moral views or the degree to which they're getting the rewards of society and that they're not respecting the rest of society. You know, we did put ourselves in a situation where it was kind of ripe for that. And in a democracy, you know, people are showing their frustration whether or not our response really helps improve their lives and makes them feel better. You know, we that really is being tested.

ZAKARIA: So, let me ask you a final question about A.I. in a broader sense. You know, we can all talk about the job displacement. And who know -- it's hard to predict right now because the data centers are being built. You actually have more jobs coming in.

But over time, you wonder, you know, the A.I. seems like it does coding better than the coder. does accounting better than the accountant. It does certainly basic law better than the junior lawyers.

You know, is there a fundamental way to think about what does it leave for human beings to do that is special and unique?

GATES: Well, my memo raises the idea that perhaps some occupations, you know, child care certainly, being a juror, being a judge, a variety of things we should reserve for humans.

[10:55:05]

And, you know, we want to make sure that social relationships of young people are with humans, not just with A.I. And so we should actually curb areas where they could be used in order to preserve what's unique about humanity.

You know, it's fascinating that the pope wrote a long piece echoing some of these things, not saying to stop A.I., but rather to preserve humanity in the face of A.I. And so, this is the grand debate about, do we want to reserve those things?

And I would say this debate is just beginning. But that in a few years, I expect this will be the top area of discussion right up there with the economy by all our politicians. And getting it to be more nuanced than -- one group says, go full speed ahead. The other one says, shut it all down. I have a goal that we accelerate the good and minimize the risks.

ZAKARIA: As this debate goes on, I hope we'll be able to call on you to come from time to time and talk about it.

GATES: I look forward to it.

ZAKARIA: Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)