UN Chief to Acknowledge India’s Role in Promoting AI Safe, Accessible to All

UNITED NATIONS:
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was welcomed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Guterres attended a banquet hosted by PM Modi for the high-level participants at the summit, his Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

When he speaks at the summit on Thursday, he will acknowledge India’s role in guiding the discussions on making AI more inclusive, Dujarric said.

He said Guterres “will call for AI to be accessible for any everyone, and to benefit everyone and to be safe for everyone”.

He “will say India brings this conversation closer to the reality shaping much of the world, because the future of AI cannot be decided by handful of countries or left to the whims of a few billionaires”, Dujarric said.

The views of Guterres and PM Modi on AI’s global future converge with both advocating for an inclusive AI.

⁠The summit’s goal is to ensure that AI promotes “welfare for all, happiness for all, reflecting our shared commitment to harnessing Artificial Intelligence for human-centric progress,” PM Modi said on X.

More than 35,000 people from over 100 countries are at the summit and they include 20 prime ministers or presidents and at least 45 foreign ministers.

Among them are Presidents Emmanuel Macron of France, Pedro Sanchez Perez-Castejon of Spain, and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Dujarric said that Guterres will hold bilateral meetings with leaders and ministers attending the summit.

Tech titans Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani.

Last month, Guterres said at a news conference, “I praise India for having assumed leadership in relation to” summits seeking to chart the future course AI.