Bill Gates has pulled out of a keynote address at the AI Impact Summit in India as he continues to face questions over his relationship with the deceased child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The billionaire Microsoft co-founder travelled to India, where his foundation works with the government on delivering AI for social good, earlier this week and was advertised as speaking at the international summit shortly after the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.
But Gates suddenly withdrew on Thursday morning, hours before he was due to address delegates, including the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani.
The Gates Foundation said in a statement: “After careful consideration and to ensure the focus remains on the AI summit’s key priorities, Mr Gates will not be delivering his keynote address..”
The move came less than 48 hours after the Gates Foundation had insisted: “Bill Gates is attending the AI Impact Summit. He will be delivering his keynote as scheduled.”
While his foundation did not explicitly address what Gates feared might distract from the intended focus of the summit, the latest release of Epstein files in late January intensified the controversy surrounding his ties to the disgraced financier.
Gates has said he “regrets” ever knowing Epstein after allegations that he hid a sexually transmitted disease from his then-wife after contact with “Russian girls” surfaced in the latest release of the Epstein files.
He has denied the claim, which appeared in a draft email written by Epstein, as “false”, and apologised for his interactions with his former associate. “Every minute I spent with him, I regret,” Gates, 70, told Australian news outlet 9News earlier this month.
Epstein died by suicide by August 2019 in New York’s Metropolitan correctional centre as he awaited trial on sexual abuse trafficking charges. In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges in Florida of solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor, and served 13 months of an 18-month sentence.
Melinda French Gates, to whom Gates was married until 2021, described how the recent release of Epstein files brought back “memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage”.
“Whatever questions remain there of what – I can’t even begin to know all of it – those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband,” French Gates told NPR. “They need to answer to those things, not me.”
The Gates Foundation stressed on Thursday it “remains fully committed to our work in India to advance our shared health and development goals”, and would be represented by Ankur Vora, president of its Africa and India offices, at the summit.
The AI summit in Delhi is also due to hear from the chief executive of OpenAI, Sam Altman, the chief executive of Google, Sundar Pichai and the White House AI adviser Sriram Krishnan. The UK is represented by the deputy prime minister, David Lammy, and the AI minister, Kanishka Narayan.
On Wednesday, former UK chancellor George Osborne said countries that do not embrace the kind of powerful AI systems made by his new employer, OpenAI, risk “Fomo” and could be left weaker and poorer. He warned the summit audience: “Don’t be left behind.”
Also speaking at the summit was Rishi Sunak, the former UK prime minister, who now advises one of OpenAI’s main rivals, Anthropic, and Microsoft.
Sunak urged political leaders to take bolder steps to lead the rollout of AI, saying: “If you are a prime minister you can only do a few things that you drive personally, and this has to be one of them.”
In a different kind of warning, the UN chief, António Guterres, urged technology leaders at the summit that the future of AI cannot be left to “the whims of a few billionaires”.
Guterres called on tech tycoons to support a $3bn global fund to ensure open access to the fast-advancing technology for all.
