The Gates Foundation has warned that billions of people could be left behind by artificial intelligence because it does not understand their languages or the conditions they live in. The rapid rise in AI use risks widening the gap between rich and poor unless the technology is deliberately designed to serve people in the world’s poorest countries.
The Foundation’s 2026 Goalkeepers Report notes that more than 90 percent of the data used to train early large‑language models came from English‑language sources. Speech‑recognition systems make errors of less than 6 percent in English, but in Yoruba—spoken widely in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa—the error rate is ten times higher.
AI tools also risk failing when they are transplanted from wealthy countries into poorer ones without local data. A system designed for a commercial farmer in Iowa may not understand the crops, pests, markets or constraints facing a smallholder in Ethiopia.
The report warns that, if left to the market, the most capable AI tools will first be built for those who can pay. Yet AI could also close shortages of doctors, teachers and agricultural advisers in poorer countries by putting specialist knowledge into frontline workers’ hands.
The Foundation will commit at least US$1 billion over the next two years to make AI more accessible, funding healthcare, education, agriculture and digital infrastructure such as local‑language datasets. Early projects include an AI system that improved diagnostic accuracy in Kenyan clinics, education tools with large learning gains in Sierra Leone and the United States, and an agricultural service now used by more than 740,000 farmers in India.
