Bill Gates tackles microchip vaccine conspiracy head-on in Netflix special

Entertainment

What keeps Bill Gates up at night? From AI and disinformation to global warming, being too rich, and health inequality, the billionaire unpacks five issues set to shape the future in his new Netflix series What’s Next.
Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates highlights five topics that are top of mind for the future and tackles the microchip vaccine conspiracy theory head-on. Image: Netflix

“Success creates the challenge of, what does the next set of goals look like?,” Bill Gates states just before the credits roll on the first episode of his new Netflix series.

It’s a question the former CEO and co-founder of Microsoft has had a decade to think through. Gates stepped down from the chairman role in 2014 and has committed to giving away most of his $100 billion wealth in the years since.

The context in which Gates is asking the question in the Netflix series is not related to his personal circumstances though. He is speaking philosophically about a hypothetical scenario in which the efficiency of automation has rendered humans useless.

“Then, what is the purpose of humanity?,” Gates asks viewers of the streaming service, who are left to ponder over the answer themselves rather than be lectured on the answer by the billionaire.

Gates asks a lot of existential questions throughout the five episodes of ‘What’s Next.’ The AI episode is followed by one dissecting misinformation and disinformation campaigns, called Truth or Consequences?

Confronting the vaccine conspiracy theory

It’s another topic Gates is all too familiar with, after finding himself at the centre of anti-vax conspiracies during the pandemic. Gates takes a moment to dispute, and find humour, in the internet’s suggestions that he is a shape-shifting lizard, intent on poisoning the population one McDonalds Happy Meal at a time, and plotted to insert 5G chips into Covid-19 vaccinations.

Phoebe Gates talks to her dad about social media algorithms and the nuances of short-form content. Image: Netflix

The Truth or Consequences episode digs into the genesis of the viral vaccine conspiracy theory, tracing it back to a Breakfast Club podcast based on a video made by a Christian pastor about a false post that biohackers in Sweden published.

“The beginning of this particular microchip vaccine conspiracy theory starts with a Reddit AMA that Bill Gates hosted,” reporter Ike Sriskandaraja says on the Netflix special. “He predicts that the future will involve us all having some kind of digital passport – not a microchip, not something implanted into your body.”

Can truth get in the way of a good story?

Lady Gaga understands the power of a misinformation campaign better than most. Factions of the internet claim that like Gates – and Tom Hanks – she is not human, but a lizard. The theory that she hears most often though, relates to gender.

“When I was in my early 20s there was a rumour that I was a man,” Gaga tells Gates. “I went all over the world. I travelled for tours and for promoting my records and almost every interview I sat in – there was this imagery on the Internet that had been doctored – they were like, ‘there are rumours that you’re a man. What do you have to say about that?’”

Gaga says that misinformation and disinformation campaigns can be damaging, especially when they are designed to eradicate trust in a person or concept.

Lady Gaga and Bill Gates lay misinformation on the table in What’s Next: The Future with Bill Gates. Image: Rob Liggins/Netflix © 2024

“There’s a way that we experience information now that has a lot to do with entertainment and information being a lot closer than they ever have been before,” Gaga says. “It could affect a decade’s worth of people’s relationships with vaccines and their trust. And if the public loses their trust there is no way to stop it.”

At 52 minutes, Truth or Consequences is the longest of the What’s Next episodes. It is followed by Can We Stop Global Warming? digging into climate, then Can You Be Too Rich? challenging wealth inequality, and Can We Outsmart Disease? the mainstay of the work that the Gates Foundation does.

In each episode, Gates tackles the tough question head-on giving his perspective. He also invites the viewer into discussions he has with his daughter, sisters, and experts in the field. Bono chimes in on prioritising global health. Infectious disease researcher Anthony Fauci, maligned for endorsing vaccines during the pandemic, joins Gates and Gaga to speak on his experience with disinformation. Billionaire NBA team owner Mark Cuban weighs in on income inequality.

Film director James Cameron — who penned Titanic, Avatar, and dystopian AI drama The Terminator — gives his two cents on the accelerating pace of AI.

The dystopian and the optimist

“It’s getting hard to write science fiction,” Cameron tells Gates. “Any idea I have today is a minimum of three years from getting to the screen. How am I going to be relevant in three years when things are changing so rapidly?”

Cameron compares humans giving up control to AI to loss he experienced in his own family recently, supporting his parents through dementia.

Bill Gates and James Cameron discuss unheeded warnings about regulating AI. Image: Netflix

“I think a lot of the angst out there [around AI] is very similar to how people feel at the early onset of dementia. Because they give up control. And what you get, is anger. You get fear and anxiety and depression, because you know it’s not going to get better – its going to be progressive,” says Cameron.

Solving that anxiety is a key part of moving forward to embrace AI being used for productive uses for example in medical diagnoses, Cameron says. The lack of AI regulation, however, can be compared to the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic ignoring warnings about the dangers ahead.

“Steaming full speed into the night, thinking ‘we will just turn if we see an iceberg’ is not a good way to sail a ship,” Cameron says in response to technology leaders calling for AI to be regulated.

Beyond the need for governance in the space, Cameron and Gates conclude that if human values are placed above the desire for power and market share, humanity will be in better shape in the inevitable AI future.

Crossing the aisle

Not everyone Gates interviews aligns with his perspective. He chats to far-left, independent Senator Bernie Sanders in the episode on wealth inequality and is chided by him for not going far enough to level the playing field. He also has a conversation with Republican Mitt Romney who espouses the American ideal of accumulating wealth and cutting taxes.

Gates is positioned as centrist throughout the series – embodying the role of inquisitor learning from those around him, rather than the intellectual having all of the answers. He comes across as likeable and conscientious, his academic goofiness endearing. It is a carefully curated insight into the man behind the name, effectively rehabilitating his image after scathing publicity over the last five years.

The need to be relatable and trusted is a notion that Gates acknowledges in the series. His work eradicating polio is made harder if society doesn’t have faith in the solutions – and vaccines – that the Gates Foundation finances and distributes.

Getting the community on board with what Gates is trying to achieve is touched on by Bono in the final episode. He says in his experience Gates means well, and his philanthropic efforts need to be illuminated in order to be effective.

“Left and right brain talking, that’s what we need,” says Bono. “Even the man with the deepest pockets, he can’t fix some of these problems, they are too big. We need government buy-in. That’s where advocacy comes in, where storytelling comes in and storytellers,” says Bono.

On that count, Gates and producing partner Tremolo Productions – also the storytellers behind Taylor Swift and Keith Richards’ Netflix documentaries – have done a thorough job. What’s Next: The Future with Bill Gates is well worth the cumulative four hours it takes to watch.

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