Bill Gates pulls out of India AI Summit; Anger at organizational weakness is growing

By Aditya Soni, Munsif Vengattil and Aditya Kalra

NEW DELHI, Feb 19 (Reuters) – Bill Gates pulled out of India’s AI Impact Summit hours before his scheduled keynote speech on Thursday, dealing another blow to a major event already marred by complaints of organizational glitches, robot queues and traffic chaos.

Still the six-day event pledged more than $200 billion in investment for AI infrastructure in India, including a $110 billion plan announced by Reliance Industries on Thursday. India’s Tata Group has also signed a partnership agreement with OpenAI.

However, Gates’ absence earlier this week canceled another high-profile one by Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and added to a difficult opening for a summit billed as the first major AI forum in the Global South, where India seeks to position itself as a leading voice in global AI governance.

The Gates Foundation said the billionaire would not give his address “to ensure the focus remains on the key priorities of the AI ​​Summit.” Just days ago, the foundation dismissed rumors of his absence and insisted that he was on track to attend.

Gates’ impeachment came after the U.S. Department of Justice released emails last month that included communications between the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and employees of the Gates Foundation.

Gates has said the relationship was limited to philanthropic discussions and that meeting Epstein was a mistake for him.

Modi Address, AI Commitments

In his keynote speech, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called for safeguarding children on AI platforms while addressing a gathering along with French President Emmanuel Macron, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

“We must be more vigilant about protecting children. Just as school curricula are curated, the AI ​​space must be child- and family-directed,” Modi said after standing on stage with top AI officials and posing for a photo with hands raised in a show of power.

The photoshoot created an awkward moment when Altman and Amodei, the heads of rival AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic, stood side by side on stage but did not hold hands, even though other executives did.

The symbolic unity gesture was to announce the formal launch of the New Delhi Frontier AI Commitments, a set of voluntary principles adopted by leading AI companies at the summit to advance the inclusive, responsible development of cutting-edge AI models.

Despite the investment success, India’s first major AI summit has been marred by organizational shortcomings that have shocked and angered attendees at what they described as a lack of planning by the Indian government.

Chaos and traffic jams

The summit exhibition halls were closed to the public on Thursday in a surprise move that caused further outrage among the participating companies that had stalls and pavilions. The venue was deserted after a large crowd for three days.

Indian University Galgotias was asked to vacate its stall after a staff member caused a public uproar after presenting a commercially available robot dog made in China as his own creation.

Police repeatedly blocked roads to prioritize VIP traffic to the summit, creating chaos in the city of 20 million people. The Government of India has apologized for the inconvenience caused to the attendees during the initial days.

But on Wednesday, footage on social media showed summit attendees walking for miles in central Delhi with roads blocked, with no availability of taxis and no arrangements for shuttle services.

The opposition parties have criticized the government and the Prime Minister for managing the world summit well.

“How can you expect your engineers, the AI ​​guys, to walk this far … and then we complain that entrepreneurs are leaving India,” Congress party spokesperson Pawan Khera said.

Microsoft researcher Jay Gala said on social media website X, “The whole summit is for researchers, founders, builders, who are grinding in the field every day. Instead we are treated as if we don’t matter, blocked for hours so that some minister or official can pass by.”

(Reporting by Munsif Vengatil, Aditya Soni, Aditya Kalra in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Sakshi Dayal, and Abhiram Ji; Editing by Kim Coghill, Muralikumar Anantharaman, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Christian Schmollinger)