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Microsoft founder Bill Gates, award-winning US scientists set to speak at China’s Zhongguancun forum, with AI in focus

  • More than 40 per cent of speakers at the event, held in Beijing’s answer to Silicon Valley, will be foreign guests, according to the vice-mayor
  • Turing Award winner John Hopcroft and Nobel laureate Ardem Patapoutian, are among the listed speakers, along with Baidu CEO Robin Li

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Microsoft founder Bill Gates is set to attend Beijing’s Zhongguancun Forum. Photo: Reuters
Coco Fengin Beijing

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and a number of top US scientists are set to attend a Chinese government-backed annual technology conference that kicks off on Thursday evening in Beijing, as the country seeks to boost international cooperation in the area.

Gates, who is attending as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation he founded with his former wife, is scheduled to speak on Friday at the Zhongguancun Forum, according to the event’s official website.

The six-day meeting, which has a theme of “open cooperation for a shared future”, will focus on the “frontiers of science and technology development”, including artificial intelligence (AI), Beijing vice-mayor Yu Yingjie said last week.
Then-Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He attends the opening ceremony of the 2021 Zhongguancun Forum in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua
Then-Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He attends the opening ceremony of the 2021 Zhongguancun Forum in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua

As the forum is the first major international conference held in the Zhongguancun area – Beijing’s answer to Silicon Valley – after the country’s Covid reopening, more than 40 per cent of the speakers will be foreign guests, according to Yu.

John Hopcroft, a computer science professor at Cornell University who won the Turing Award in 1986, and Nobel Prize laureate Ardem Patapoutian, an Armenian-American molecular biologist, are among the listed speakers, along with Chinese biophysicist Shi Yigong and Robin Li Yanhong, co-founder and CEO of Chinese AI and search giant Baidu.

The organiser did not immediately respond to enquiries on whether the invited guests will show up in person or via video call.

The meeting comes at a time when US start-up OpenAI’s conversational bot ChatGPT has placed the technology under the spotlight, as China’s tech rivalry with the US ramps up.

Baidu founder and CEO Robin Li Yanhong showcases Ernie Bot, the company’s answer to ChatGPT, at a launch event in Beijing on March 16. Photo: Handout
Baidu founder and CEO Robin Li Yanhong showcases Ernie Bot, the company’s answer to ChatGPT, at a launch event in Beijing on March 16. Photo: Handout
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