PM Modi interacts with Bill Gates, talks about AI, UPI, India's digital revolution: Watch Video

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates recently visited India. During his visit, he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi. During their meeting, the duo talked about a variety of topics ranging from AI and India’s digital revolution to India’s digital public infrastructure and even deepfakes.

Post the meeting, Gates thanked PM Modi for a discussion on “India’s technology-driven development”. “Breakthroughs in AI and digital public infrastructure—along with innovations in agriculture, education, and healthcare—are solving some of the country’s most critical challenges and should be models for the world,” he wrote in his post on X, formerly Twitter.

Here are top 5 takeaways from PM Modi’s interaction with Bill Gates

India’s Digital Revolution

During the conversation, PM Modi said that India’s digital infrastructure has been one of the key topics of curiosity among the global leaders and that India has created it by democratising technology. “We’ve democratised technology to prevent monopoly. It is by the people, for the people and we’re committed to ensure that emerging talents from within the community can continuously contribute and enhance its value to foster trust in technology among people,” PM Modi said during the conversation.

Digital Public Infrastructure

Talking about the need to create digital public infrastructure or DPI, PM Modi said that he aims to bridge the digital divide in India using DPI. “When I used to hear about digital divide in the world, I used to think that I will not let anything like this happen in my country. And digital public infrastructure is a big requirement in itself. Today, I want to extend this digital facility to all our villages,” he said adding, “As you observed during Covid, the world struggled with issuing vaccine certificates. In India, individuals could easily use the CoWin app. And I’ve made CoWin open source allowing access to all. In my experience, digital technology has significantly benefitted our country.”

“India will be the leader in the fourth industrial revolution through digital advancements,” PM Modi added.

To this, the Microsoft co-founder said that DPI will only get richer and better in time. “I think the key point is that the digital infrastructure keeps getting richer. A lot of people know about the identity system and the digital payments systems and that the government by taking all the payments programs and digitising those, that alone created a lot of money and created access on more equal basis,” Gates said.

AI

During the interaction, Gates also talked about the role that AI will play in expanding the access to various technological tools to everyone, to which PM Modi agreed. “Sometimes, I jokingly say that in our country, we call our mothers ‘Aai’…Now I say, when a child is born here, he says Aai and also AI as the children have become so advanced,” PM Modi said. He also said that AI should be first deployed in the areas where we have achieved expertise.

An insightful interaction with @BillGates. Do watch! https://t.co/wEhi5Ki24t

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 29, 2024

Deepfakes

The two leaders also touched upon the subject of deepfakes. When asked about the ways India plans to address the challenges that come with using AI, PM Modi said, “I suggested that we should start with clear watermarks on AI-generated content to prevent misinformation…Deepfakes: In a vast democratic country like India, the misuse of deepfake technology, it can initially deceive people leading to widespread uproar. It’s crucial to acknowledge that deepfake content is labelled AI-generated and is mentioned with its source. These measures are really important, especially in the beginning.”

Fostering innovation

Lastly, PM Modi and Gates talked about fostering nature-friendly innovation. “India has created a Rs 1 lakh crore corpus fund to boost technological innovation in sunrise sectors, which provides 50-year interest free innovation to young entrepreneurs for research on future technologies, including how to save the climate,” PM Modi shared with Gates during their conversation.