Gates Foundation commits $1 billion to expand equitable AI access

The Gates Foundation has announced plans to spend at least $1 billion over the next two years to expand access to artificial intelligence and AI-enabled solutions, particularly for communities with limited access to technology.

The foundation announced this in a press release on Tuesday as it launched its 10th annual Goalkeepers Report.

The report titled: Make This Matter: AI, Equity, and the Choice We Can’t Delay “focuses on the urgent actions needed to ensure that AI helps narrow gaps between the richest and poorest rather than widening them.

“The report includes examples of foundation-supported partners that are already changing lives using AI in clinics and classrooms and on small farms,” the foundation noted.

Funding areas

The foundation said 40 per cent of the funding will go towards education, including AI tutoring to individualise student learning and d teaching tools in the United States and other countries.

Another 40 per cent will support healthcare, including AI tools for diagnostics and clinical decision-making by frontline health workers, maternal and newborn care, and the discovery of new drugs and vaccines.

Agriculture will receive 10 per cent of the funding, including support for AI-generated advice for smallholder farmers based on their soil, weather and crop conditions.

The remaining 10 per cent will support the digital foundation needed for equitable AI, including datasets in languages that existing AI tools do not yet understand.

The foundation said equitable access to AI would require deliberate action from governments, technology companies, philanthropy and communities.

Language gap

The report also highlights the under-representation of many languages in the data used to develop AI systems.

According to the foundation, more than 90 per cent of the data used to train early large language models came from English-language sources.

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It said this has left many communities that could benefit from AI poorly represented in the data on which the tools were built.

The foundation recommended developing AI tools that work in the languages people speak and using data and expertise from the communities where the tools will be deployed.

It noted that the report also calls for countries and communities to have a greater role in determining how data used for AI is managed and protected.

It said doctors, farmers, teachers and developers need opportunities to learn how to assess AI tools and adapt them to their local settings.

The foundation also said affordable access to AI technology would require action from technology companies, as well as investment from governments and philanthropic organisations.

“We can harness AI for good. But it won’t happen by accident,” Bill Gates, chair of the Gates Foundation, once was quoted to have said.

Mr Gates called on government leaders and the companies developing the technology to measure success not only by what AI can do for the most profitable users but by what it can do for the people who stand the most to gain.”