Bill Gates will not deliver his keynote address at the India AI Impact Summit in Delhi, his philanthropic organisation said hours before the Microsoft co-founder was due to speak.
The Gates Foundation said the decision was made after “careful consideration” and “to ensure the focus remains on the [summit’s] key priorities”, but did not elaborate.
Gates’s withdrawal comes amid a controversy over his ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after he was named in new files released by the US Department of Justice in January.
Gates’s spokesperson has called the claims in the files “absolutely absurd and completely false”, and the billionaire has said he regretted spending time with Epstein.
Gates has not been accused of wrongdoing by any of Epstein’s victims and the appearance of his name in the files does not imply criminal activity of any kind.
The Gates Foundation said that Ankur Vora, president of its Africa and India offices, would speak at the summit instead of Gates.
The organisation added that it remained “fully committed” to its work in India to advance “shared health and development goals”.
His withdrawal is a blow for the summit, which India has pitched as a flagship gathering to position the country as a global AI hub.
However, there are a number of big names speaking on Thursday, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron too spoke at the summit, where they both called for the democratisation of AI and for a shared approach to innovation.
Modi said that there was a need to share technology “so that humans don’t just become a data point for AI or remain a raw material for AI”.
“AI must become a medium for inclusion and empowerment, particularly for the Global South,” he said.
Meanwhile, Macron who earlier held bilateral talks with Modi following which the two leaders announced a boost in defence and strategic ties between their countries, echoed Modi’s call for inclusion.
He said that there was a need to change the discussion around AI from ‘let’s do more’ to ‘let’s do better together’. Meanwhile, UN chief Antonio Guterres stressed that the future of AI should not be “decided by a handful of countries” or left to the “whims of a few billionaires”.
Google’s CEO Sundai Pichai underscored India’s growing role in the AI landscape and also shared that his firm was working on establishing a full-stack AI hub in the southern city of Vishakhapatnam as part of its $15bn infrastructure investment in India.
The announcement comes after days of uncertainty over whether Gates would attend the summit. He is currently in India and had visited the southern state of Andhra Pradesh on Monday, where he reportedly discu
By Anthony Solly
