What’s Next: The Future with Bill Gates Review 2024 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
The terror-inducing statements come thick and fast in the opening episode of this documentary series, What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates. A lot of them are said by people who have had a big hand in inventing the stuff, which is not hugely reassuring. Experts, innovators, tech journalists and – uh – film director James Cameron (there to deliver an extended metaphor about not waiting until an iceberg hits to see how you’ll deal with it when you’re steering the new AI ship) are interviewed by the Microsoft founder turned billionaire philanthropist.
Gates is a surprisingly charming, drily funny presence – especially in episode two, which deals with the problem of disinformation now being able to fly a thousand times round the world before the truth has fired up its laptop. This sees him discover that Tom Hanks is thought to have joined his secret lizard society bent on global domination via microchipping McDonald’s fries (conspiracists appear to want to fold every American treasure into one giant theory, and you kinda have to admire the work they’re putting in).
Gates is an optimist. I agree we might all feel better about life if we had lived his and had umpty squillion in the bank to show for it. But Gates, the programme is at pains to point out, is working and investing to make that optimism well founded. Each episode tackles a particular issue: the threat (or not!) of AI, keeping hold of the truth in the internet age, the problem of the climate crisis, the vast inequalities caused by untrammelled capitalism (Bernie Sanders calls his wealth “obscene” and it’s the only time Gates’s smile falters), global healthcare provision and eradicating disease.
People at the cutting edge of the technology that may save us in each case are interviewed, along with a celebrity or two (including Cameron, Lady Gaga and, with crushing inevitability, Bono). A promising scheme or two that Gates is backing to solve the problem is cheerily outlined (new generation nuclear power plants that won’t pollute or kill us!). Gates ends with an uplifting thought in voiceover or in person, and everything is very brightly lit.
If What’s Next? is intended as a counsel against despair, though, it needs to be fleshed out. I’m glad about the new nuclear power plant possibilities, but I’ve searched through my notes several times and concrete plans for curtailing AI and retaining humanity’s sense of purpose seem markedly thin on the ground. When some of the people most deeply involved are begging for regulation and yet no regulation is forthcoming – what happens then? A lot of people seem to be essentially standing around saying they only intended AI to be used for catching cancer early or making online education available to all, not for replacing human interaction or reducing us all to workless lumps of flesh wandering about the fully automated planet searching for ways to fill the unforgiving minute. Yet there doesn’t seem to be any way of stopping it.
There are ways, Sanders points out in episode four (“Can You Be Too Rich?”), that income inequality can be solved. But Gates does not seem too keen on the idea of capping fortunes. Senator Mitt Romney seems to be more congenial company, bloviating about the American dream, innovation, pro-risk attitudes. But again – how this helps the 38 million Americans unable to afford the basic necessities of life while 1% hold 40% of the entire country’s wealth is far from clear. But Gates has got 300 members of the former to pledge to give away at least half of their fortunes when they die. So that’s all right then.
