TOPLINE Former Microsoft CEO and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates called artificial intelligence the “most important advance” in technology since the development of computers and smartphones in a blog post-Tuesday, arguing AI bears both opportunities and responsibilities as it can help improve access to healthcare and education globally—but acknowledged developers still need to work out some shortcomings.
Gates pitched the advances in AI as a way to improve productivity in the workplace, help reduce global preventable deaths among children and improve inequity in American education by bettering students’ math skills.
AI will reduce the workload on healthcare workers, completing tasks for them like filing insurance claims and drafting notes from doctor’s visits, Gates predicted.
Gates also sees AI as a way to reduce the death rate for young children—five million children under the age of five die every year—particularly in poor countries, where AI could help patients determine whether they need to seek treatment and AI-linked devices like ultrasound machines could help healthcare workers be more productive.
One of the Gates Foundation’s priorities will be ensuring advancements in AI are used to help the poorest people in the world, including those who struggle with health problems like AIDS, TB, and malaria, the billionaire said.
AI could also revolutionize education in the next five to ten years, Gates said, by creating tools that understand an individual’s interests and learning style and tailoring educational content to those needs, but he cautioned that tools need to be equally accessible to all schools.
TANGENT
AI has reached consumers in recent months by way of chatbots that can simulate human conversation, with Microsoft—which Gates co-founded almost 50 years ago—investing in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Microsoft has integrated ChatGPT into its Bing search engine, and on Tuesday, Google announced its response to the AI frenzy with the launch of its chatbot Bard.
Gates acknowledged the current shortcomings of AI, including its lack of understanding of abstract reasoning, its ability to create something fictional when asked by users, and its inability to understand the context of human requests. However, he argued none of these problems are “fundamental limitations” of the technology and said the issues, which developers are working to resolve, “will be gone before we know it.” Gates also noted the concern that AI could be used for malign purposes, but said governments and the private sector needed to work together to “limit the risks.”
“[AI] will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other,” Gates said. “Entire industries will reorient around it. Businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it.”
KEY BACKGROUND
While Tuesday’s post is Gates’ firmest endorsement of the future of AI, these are by no means Gates’ first comments on the developing technology. Last month in an exclusive interview with Forbes, Gates described AI advancements as “pretty stunning” and, similarly to Tuesday’s letter, compared them to the developments of the PC and the internet. Gates said Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s artificial intelligence program works better than others in the space and called the broad availability of ChatGPT “very impressive.” At the end of last year, Gates also said his foundation was working to develop an ultrasound tool for the developing world using AI software. The probe, which Gates said could help reduce the number of deaths during the neonatal period, would be plugged into a mobile phone or tablet and can distinguish whether the pregnancy is high risk or whether the mother could need a C-section delivery. If the technology is helpful in places where it’s currently being tested—Kenya and South Africa—Gates said it could be widely available in two to three years.
FORBES VALUATION
We estimate Gates to be worth $107 billion, making him the fifth richest person in the world.
Soon-To-Be Grandfather Bill Gates Is Betting On AI, Gene Therapy, And Other New Technologies To Solve Global Problems (Forbes)
Dwayne Johnson clenches his granite jaw as he squints into the distance. A bead of sweat drips down his forehead before he throws back his head in a belly-shaking laugh. It’s a sweltering summer day in Atlanta, and The Rock is on set doing what The Rock does best. He licks his lips, delivers his lines with panache, and swaggers his hulking 6-foot-5 frame out of the shot.
Johnson is rarely out of focus these days. In the last decade, the 46-year-old former professional wrestler has leveraged his indefatigable charm—the kind that drives him, only half-jokingly, to float himself as a potential presidential candidate—to become Hollywood’s most bankable star. His acting earnings last year—the vast majority of his $124 million haul—are the largest ever recorded in the 20 years Forbes has tracked the Celebrity 100 and nearly double the $65 million he earned in 2017.
“The number one goal is to create stuff for the world,” says Johnson, sitting in his air-conditioned trailer in a blue polka-dot shirt and jeans. In other words, the ubiquity. Besides a stream of movies, there’s his hit HBO series, Ballers, and one of the shrewdest strategies on social media. On Instagram, where he has more than 108 million followers, he delivers inspirational videos of himself talking directly to his iPhone, often in his traveling gym. Other posts—leveraging another 13 million Twitter followers and 58 million on Facebook—introduce movie trailers, show Johnson in development meetings, and celebrate his “cheat day” pancake stack, all decorated with multiple hashtags and millions of likes.
Now he’s pioneering a new way to cash in on that digital fame. In addition to hefty $20 million up-front paychecks and cuts of back-end studio profits—starting with July’s Skyscraper, in which he plays a former FBI hostage-rescue leader—he’ll insist on a separate seven-figure social media fee with every movie in which he appears, according to people familiar with his deals. In other words, rather than have studios dump money into TV ads or billboards, their new paid-marketing channel doubles as their marquee star.
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“Skyscraper,” which opens July 13, is Dwayne Johnson’s fifth movie in the past 15 months, following the “Baywatch” and “Jumanji” reboots, the latest in the “The Fast and the Furious” series and “Rampage.”EVAN AGOSTINI/INVISION/AP
“Social media has become the most critical element of marketing a movie for me,” Johnson says. “I have established a social media equity with an audience around the world that there’s a value in what I’m delivering to them.”
Johnson still does the talk show circuit, the press tours, and the other promotional duties expected of stars (especially when the real money comes from the box-office back end). But in stipulating that social media channels are separate platforms that require separate fees, Johnson is attempting to set a Hollywood precedent.
For The Rock, at least, the studios seem to have accepted this arrangement: Promotional spending on a tentpole movie can climb above $150 million and still not guarantee a blockbuster. A-list actors tapping their fan base augurs a cheaper, more targeted way for studios to promote a new movie.
“The star power that matters right now is the power of social media,” says Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at ComScore. For now, The Rock is alone in demanding cash for social media on top of his contract. His Central Intelligence costar, Kevin Hart, pocketed $2 million from Sony for tweeting about his own films and others years ago, but the scale of the comedian’s overall paycheck is still dwarfed by Johnson’s. In fact, studios now track social media following and engagement to make casting decisions.
Johnson has always had engagement by the ton. He followed his father and grandfather into professional wrestling, borrowing a piece of his father’s ring name, Rocky Johnson, to become The Rock—a sobriquet that encapsulates both his physique and his attitude.
A 2000 appearance on Saturday Night Live caught the eye of Universal executives, who gave him a cameo in The Mummy Returns in 2001. Impressed, the studio gave his tiny character its own spinoff, The Scorpion King, which went on to earn more than $165 million worldwide on a $60 million budget.
After a string of middling action movies and then three saccharine family movies (Tooth Fairy, anyone?), The Rock rebooted his career by doubling down on the brawn that first earned him a fan base. “My wrestling past has informed me in terms of having a real connection with an audience,” he explains. “It has to be the audience first. What does the audience want, and what is the best scenario that we can create that will send them home happy?”
Such a give-the-people-what-they-want philosophy may not win him Oscars, but it will make billions at the box office. According to analysts, Johnson has high appeal in all four quadrants tracked at the multiplex: male, female, over-25, and under-25.
For studios, he’s a dependable hedge against a North American box office that dipped 2% in 2017 to $11.1 billion. The international language of blowing stuff up doesn’t require translation, and his forte is exactly what sells abroad. (More than 64% of his box-office grosses come from international audiences.) Thanks to Johnson’s mixed Samoan and African-American heritage, his melting-pot looks make him a local hero around the globe.
As Johnson succeeded, he upped his business game. Five years ago, with his ex-wife and manager, Dany Garcia, he launched Seven Bucks Productions, geared at transforming The Rock from an actor into an enterprise. When Johnson appears in a movie, the Seven Bucks creative, production, and digital team of eight work on every element, from developing the script to aiding production and helping guide its promotional rollout. The company also runs a YouTube channel and creates mobile content for Johnson’s social media platforms.
“Having a very large footprint helps us execute,” says Garcia, a former wealth manager who also runs a talent-management firm while overseeing Seven Bucks Productions alongside Johnson. “We would never do anything half-assed.”
The impact created extends to Johnson’s endorsements, which include Apple and a recently concluded Ford partnership. With the addition of a former Droga5 executive, Seven Bucks Creative, a team of two, crafted Johnson’s Project Rock campaign with Under Armour, in which Johnson has a bestselling apparel line and a new branded set of headphones.
Dwayne Johnson at his Forbes photo shoot.MICHAEL PRINCE FOR FORBES
The natural progression: projects where Johnson isn’t necessarily front and center. “This is our next step,” Garcia says. “Let’s take ownership, develop properties, and look into properties that we can retell.” Over the next few years, Seven Bucks will roll out The Janson Directive, starring WWE colleague John Cena, and Shazam!, a superhero action adventure.
The name Seven Bucks is an inside joke, a reminder of a bleak period early in his career when he was cut from the Canadian Football League and arrived broke in Tampa in October 1995.
Disney’s “Moana” brought in almost $240 million at the box office; Dwayne Johnson starred in the animated feature film as the demigod Maui. 2016 GETTY IMAGES
“I had a five, a one and change,” he recalls of his net worth, adding that as an optimist, “I rounded up to seven.”
Now his net worth is closer to $165 million. It’s a journey that, he claims, puts him right on time. “What I’ve learned from [Disney CEO] Bob Iger is when you’re going to do something right with global appeal,” Johnson says, “it’s going to take time—a decade, two decades, possibly more.” What will the next two decades look like? Fittingly, he speaks like a hashtag: “It’s limitless.”
