There are many problems billionaire tech tycoon Bill Gates is hoping to help solve: eradicating polio, water sanitization, and agricultural development to name a few. But one frontier he worries is being passed on to future generations is misinformation.
Misinformation is a problem, the Microsoft cofounder said, that we are “handing to the younger generation.”
Speaking to CNBC Make It, Gates, worth $118 billion per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, said he had been naive to assume that “when we made information available, that people would want correct information.”
A high-profile figure himself, Gates has seen scrutiny extend to his family. His daughter Phoebe, in particular, has struggled with being harassed online.
“Hearing my daughter talk about how she’d been harassed online, and how her friends experienced that quite a bit, brought that into focus in a way that I hadn’t thought about before,” Gates—a father of three—continued.
Gates’ youngest daughter—co-founder of AI shopping tool Phia—has previously spoken about misconceptions surrounding her family and relationships, including being “memed for being in an interracial relationship.”
An internet meme is an image or video, usually intended to be humorous, that is spread online.
Despite being aware of how misinformation is spreading online, Gates said he can understand why certain audiences flock to platforms that reflect their views—a phenomenon known as confirmation bias.
“We have context where we want correct information, like hopefully when we want medical advice,” Gates said. “But then we kind of like, in our community and enclave, have these shared views that kind of pull us together.”
He explained: “Even I will wallow. Let’s say there’s a politician I don’t like, and there’s some article online criticizing him a little bit. I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s such a good critique, [and] I enjoyed reading it, even if it was exaggerated.’”
AI could help curb misinformation
Gates’ probing questions about how to control the spread of incorrect information online may be at odds with the take of fellow billionaire Elon Musk.
Gates said in the interview: “We should have free speech. But if you’re inciting violence, if you’re causing people not to take vaccines, where are those boundaries? Even the U.S. should have rules, and then if you have rules, what is it? Is it some AI that encodes those rules? You have billions in activity, and if you catch it a day later the harm is done.”
This isn’t the first time Gates has proposed the emerging technology as a tool against misinformation and deepfakes (images and videos which are incredibly realistic but are not authentic).
In a blog post on his website, GatesNotes, in July 2023, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation cofounder wrote: “This will be a cyclical process: Someone finds a way to detect fakery, someone else figures out how to counter it, someone else develops counter-countermeasures, and so on.
“It won’t be a perfect success, but we won’t be helpless either.”
Elon Musk’s take on freedom of speech
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of X—the platform previously known as Twitter—is a free-speech absolutist who is unlikely to appreciate the notion of rules being placed on what he, or others, can say.
Musk believes freedom of speech is the “bedrock of democracy” and has vowed to battle apparent censorship of his platform.
That being said, a debate over how to control misinformation wouldn’t be the first time the views of Musk and Gates have been at odds. In July 2024, for example, Musk threatened Gates would be “obliterated” for apparently holding a bearish position on Tesla stock. Fortune could not confirm whether Gates still owns a short position on the EV maker.
Likewise, Gates has said his management style is better than that of Musk—a boss he believes may push “too hard.” Meanwhile, Musk has claimed Gates doesn’t understand artificial intelligence, saying his insight on the topic is “limited.”
More recently, the tech titans have been at loggerheads over Musk’s work at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE.) In January 2025, Gates said he hoped some of the foreign aid and personnel cuts enacted by DOGE would be rolled back: “Elon I think said ‘Yeah, we made a mistake, we went overboard,’ but … what is the equilibrium? How many of those people can be kept so we can continue to save tens of millions of lives?” Gates also accused Musk of some “insane” political interference in 2025.
In November, Musk revived the bad blood between the pair, writing on X that if Gates hadn’t closed out his alleged “crazy short position” against Tesla, “he had better do so soon.”
It seems misinformation may just be another of many topics on which the billionaires will have to agree to disagree.
More on Bill Gates:
Bill Gates’ $200 billion moonshot: Inside the biggest bet on humanity a philanthropist has ever made
Bill Gates believes Alzheimer’s blood tests should be part of routine medicals—such prevention means you could work into your 90s if you wanted to
Bill Gates calls on Congress to ‘show its values’ on foreign aid, or this year will see children’s deaths go up instead of down
A version of this article was first published on September 5, 2024.
