Bill Gates Cancels India AI Summit Keynote Amid Scrutiny Over Epstein Ties
– Bill Gates has withdrawn from delivering a keynote address at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, hours before he was scheduled to speak, his philanthropic organization announced Thursday.
The Gates Foundation stated the decision was made after “careful consideration” and “to ensure the focus remains on the [summit’s] key priorities,” but offered no further explanation. The move comes as renewed scrutiny surrounds Gates’s past relationship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Gates had traveled to India earlier this week, visiting the southern state of Andhra Pradesh on Monday, where he reportedly discussed initiatives aimed at boosting health, agriculture, education, and technology. He was advertised as speaking at the international summit shortly after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The India AI Impact Summit has drawn a number of high-profile attendees, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian businessman Mukesh Ambani. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are also scheduled to speak.
The Gates Foundation said that Ankur Vora, president of its Africa and India offices, would speak at the summit in Gates’s place. The organization emphasized its continued “full commitment” to its work in India, focused on advancing “shared health and development goals.”
Gates’s spokesperson has previously described claims made in recently released court documents regarding his relationship with Epstein as “absolutely absurd and completely false.” Gates himself has stated he regretted spending time with Epstein.
Despite the appearance of his name in the released files, Gates has not been accused of wrongdoing by any of Epstein’s victims, and the inclusion of his name does not imply any criminal activity, according to reports.
Prime Minister Modi and President Macron, who both spoke at the summit, called for the democratization of AI and a shared approach to innovation. Modi stressed the need to share technology “so that humans don’t just become a data point for AI or remain a raw material for AI,” adding that “AI must become a medium for inclusion and empowerment, particularly for the Global South.”
