Bill Gates announced that the Gates Foundation will pour at least $1 billion to expand access to artificial intelligence.
Gates wrote that the investment is urgent. “The decisions made in the next 12 to 18 months, about how AI is built, funded, and deployed, will determine whether this technology primarily benefits the people who already have the most or reaches those who have the least,” he declared in a Goalkeepers report. “AI could be a great equalizer—or widen the gap. This is not a long-range prediction. It’s a present-tense choice.”
“The Gates Foundation was created in part to address a basic market failure: the people with the greatest needs often have the least power to shape where innovation and investment go,” Gates wrote in the report. “Left to the market alone, the most capable tools will be built first for the people and institutions most able to pay for them—not necessarily for those who could benefit most.”
Gates previously raised questions about how AI may be equitable for the masses. “In terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice,” he said, going on to ask, “How will we use this technology to make the world a fairer place and keep it from widening the divide between rich and poor?”
“How will we protect the people who are most vulnerable to the harms caused by artificial intelligence, including those who lose their livelihoods and the sense that they are in control of their future?” he wrote in a post on Gates Notes.
