--- title: Innovation Can Build the Future Our Grandchildren Deserve description: The opportunities to reduce inequity, even at this tumultuous moment, are out there, writes Bill Gates canonical: https://time.com/6242404/bill-gates-innovation-can-build-the-future/ author: Bill Gates article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-12-20T05:05:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-19T07:05:38.819Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Bill Gates: How Innovation Can Build the Future Our Grandchildren Deserve og:description: The opportunities to reduce inequity, even at this tumultuous moment, are out there og:url: https://time.com/6242404/bill-gates-innovation-can-build-the-future/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5cfd17b2b17bd0b7/698a38ff47ca38198f3ba5a2/innovation-future-polio-vaccine.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: innovation-future-polio-vaccine og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Bill Gates: How Innovation Can Build the Future Our Grandchildren Deserve twitter:description: The opportunities to reduce inequity, even at this tumultuous moment, are out there twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5cfd17b2b17bd0b7/698a38ff47ca38198f3ba5a2/innovation-future-polio-vaccine.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Innovation Can Build the Future Our Grandchildren Deserve > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=9708126f-d5aa-425f-acee-9960ff64907d&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Innovator of the Year: Gregory Robinson and The James Webb Space Telescope [Watch (HLS stream): Innovator of the Year: Gregory Robinson and The James Webb Space Telescope](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/vvFzrrBk.m3u8) (4:23)  _Published 2022-12-07. TIME's 2022 Innovator of the Year is Gregory Robinson and The James Webb Telescope_  by [Bill Gates](https://time.com/author/bill-gates/)  ## Bill Gates Dec 20, 2022 5:05 AM UTC TIME's 2022 Innovator of the Year is Gregory Robinson and The James Webb Telescope  by [Bill Gates](https://time.com/author/bill-gates/)  ## Bill Gates Dec 20, 2022 5:05 AM UTC I’ve been saying for years that the world is getting better. I’ll point out that, for example, the number of young children who die before their fifth birthday has fallen by more than half in just two decades—from 10 million in 2000 to just over 4 million today. But current events are making it harder to argue that the future will be better than the past. Russia’s war on Ukraine is inflicting terrible suffering in Eastern Europe and driving up food and energy prices around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic caused millions of deaths and severely hampered efforts to immunize children. Economic growth is slowing. And climate change is leading to more frequent extreme weather. These setbacks are causing the most pain for people who were already the worst off. It would compound the tragedy if nations stopped doing the things that have worked for the past two decades—including being generous with foreign aid. The world should continue to do more to help the poorest. The good news is that this is eminently achievable. We can continue to reduce health inequity while dealing with war, the economy, the pandemic, and climate change—thanks in part to innovations in global health that will allow the world’s efforts to have more impact than ever. Some of these innovations are already being deployed, like a [new polio vaccine](https://time.com/6210019/polio-new-vaccine/) that will move us closer to eradication despite recent setbacks. Others are being tested now with the potential to be used more widely soon, like AI-powered ultrasounds that could help save mothers and their babies. Although the number of children who die before age 5 has gone down dramatically, the number of babies of who die in the first 30 days of life—what’s known as the neonatal period—is not dropping nearly as fast. Almost 1.9 million newborns died in 2019, only a third fewer than in 2000. The causes of neonatal deaths are complicated. To make a dent in them, health workers need to deal with underlying causes as early in the child’s life as possible, or even before they’re born. The first step is to identify women with the greatest risk of complications during pregnancy. In rich countries like the United States, we do this with frequent checkups, lab tests, and an ultrasound. But in low-income settings, ultrasound machines simply aren’t practical. They’re bulky, expensive, and require special training to use. That’s why the foundation and several partners are funding work to vastly simplify the process. Instead of wheeling in a big machine on a cart, you just plug a probe into a mobile phone or tablet. You swipe it across the mom’s belly a few times, and then up and down. Software uses artificial intelligence to read the images and provide all the information that a trained human would provide. This super-promising approach is being tested in Kenya and South Africa to see whether using it at scale makes a measurable difference for moms and babies. If it does, we’ll bring in more partners to reduce the cost so that more countries can afford it. Some of the innovations I’m most excited about are a lot further away, but they have the potential to save and improve millions of lives. Based on [recent research](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/hiv-aids-cure/), I think there’s a good chance a cure for HIV will be available in 10 to 15 years. The key is breakthroughs in gene therapy, which involves making edits to small portions of a person’s genetic makeup. These edited genes can’t be passed on to the person’s children, but they can fix genetic mutations that cause the patient debilitating and deadly medical problems. Scientists are working on various ways to accomplish this. (One involves modifying the surface of the cells that HIV likes to invade, making it much harder for the virus to get inside them.) There are still years of work ahead before any of these approaches are proven safe and effective, and the earliest versions might be short-lived and require additional doses to keep the HIV from coming back. But the potential impact is enormous. Today, roughly 38 million people around the world are living with HIV, and another 1.5 million become newly infected each year. To survive, they have to take antiretroviral drugs every day for the rest of their lives. An ideal HIV cure will free all of them from taking these drugs and save the world millions of dollars a year in treatment costs. It will also mean that millions of people never have to worry about getting HIV in the future. While there is a lot of bad news these days, I’m inspired by the breakthroughs amazing scientists around the world are making every day—whether they are a lifesaving new use for CRISPR or a groundbreaking new way to produce clean energy. Each one represents a new opportunity to help people, but it’s important to remember that none of these breakthroughs happened overnight. If we want to make things better for the next generation, we need to invest in a better future today. The opportunities to reduce inequity, even at this tumultuous moment, are out there. Success is a long-term prospect, and it starts with actions we take now. 2023 is the year we should make the most of these opportunities. _This essay is adapted from Gates’_ [_The Year Ahead 2023_](https://gatesnot.es/YearAhead) ## Transcript We promised a telescope that was a hundred times more powerful than what we've had before, but not only, is it working. This is better than we expected, time to self. James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe. The first science images that we released in July the president, rolling this out. That's a pretty big deal. The world is really end of this telescope and is along for the ride and wants to know, what the next stop on the road trip, is When was the the real driver? Let's get this thing done. Whatever it takes their issues along the way long before I came on and and no one religion. When you want to do both things, that's really would be some unprecedented risk. And you just try to minimize as much as possible. That's what the team did. They are, they did an excellent job with it. We do a lot of comparisons to I will rightfully so because then I was supposed to be Premier for 30 years Weber's. Probably twice the size of Hubble close to half. The mass was Bubbles and Laura, KB and web is a million miles out, but to see the difference in Clarity and the difference of what you see, and the difference in how quickly you can get the same image, it was thrilling to see those. For Dave Mustaine there's no joystick. It's it's not like anybody's, you know what a little more, the left little the right, it's more like a playlist. We have a very detailed playlist or set of recipes. Every minute of the time is scripted, is in one of those recipes and we schedule the telescope that a week at a time. On launch day, I was here for us. The moment that was so beautiful. That first. Oh my gosh. Things are just going to go. Well on this project was the separation from the launch vehicle that's when this crowd cheered for life. I did not. I don't know if that was just confidence in the team and and the systems and the thrill of Separation than solo race. The Star by blowing, now taking its pursuit of cosmological Discovery and it was the first day that we got to see the images that were going to go public. We all crowded around the corner and it was just gorgeous. For science perspective, star formation. And you're getting a sea star cluster formation within Galaxy. I'm taking out, but I'm also just like, oh my gosh, this is going to show everybody that it works. Off work would fix my whole life and there was no better seen than to see a bunch of Geeks. Just fall over themselves with joy. It's a new window into the history of our universe and today we're going to get a glimpse of the first light to shine through that window light from other worlds orbiting Stars far beyond her own president spending time to talk to us about Webb and roll this out to the world quite quite satisfied, a real sense of our own Galaxy formed our own solar system than our sun on our planets form or not. And lastly, I think we're going to learn so many new questions that we have to go off and try to answer. 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