Gates Foundation commits $1 billion to expand equitable AI access

The Gates Foundation has pledged $1 billion to improve access to artificial intelligence (AI) over the next two years. The funding will support AI-focused efforts in areas such as education, health, and agriculture. According to Premium Times, 40 per cent of the funding will go towards education, including AI tutoring to individualise student learning and classroom teaching tools in the United States and other countries.

The foundation's annual Goalkeepers report, which tracks progress on the United Nations' development goals, warns that AI will either narrow or widen the gap between the rich and poor, with choices made in the next two years being crucial. The report identifies areas where action is needed to ensure AI improves lives and livelihoods, including making AI tools work in every language people speak, as over 90 per cent of the data used to train early large language models came from English-language sources.

Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman said the foundation will continue to press the US government for foreign assistance, despite challenges. The foundation's efforts will focus on training models on local languages, improving health outcomes, upgrading educational tools, and informing small farmers' practices around the world.

Brief written by urgent.news from Premium Times, The Korea Times, The Hindu - Sci-Tech, Hindustan Times, YourStory — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.