The Aporia · Billions of people could be left behind by AI because it doesn’t understand their needs, Gates Foundation warns

Billions of people could be left behind by AI because it doesn’t understand their needs, Gates Foundation warns

Read the original at The Independent ↗

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Cookman, L. (2026, September 15). Billions of people could be left behind by AI because it doesn’t understand their needs, Gates Foundation warns. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/ai-poverty-inequality-gates-foundation-b3049925.html

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Quick Summary

The Gates Foundation warns that billions of people could be left behind due to AI's lack of understanding of non-English languages and conditions prevalent in poorer countries. More than 90% of early large language models were trained on English data, leading to high error rates for other languages like Yoruba. The foundation’s annual report emphasizes the need for AI to serve people in poor nations, advocating for targeted investments to address healthcare, education, and agricultural needs. Bill Gates notes that decisions made over the next year and a half will determine whether AI primarily benefits those who already have advantages or reaches those with the least resources.

Written by AI on 2026-09-15, from this article's own text only (the story summary below draws on all the coverage).

AI analysis

Story summary

The Gates Foundation has issued a warning that billions of people could be left behind by artificial intelligence due to its lack of understanding of their languages and living conditions. The foundation’s annual report on global progress highlights that over 90% of data used to train early large language models originates from English-language sources, leading to high error rates for non-English languages such as Yoruba, which is spoken widely in Nigeria and west Africa, where errors occur more than ten times higher than in English. AI tools designed for commercial farmers in Iowa are likely to fail when applied to smallholder farmers in Ethiopia due to differences in crops, pests, markets, and constraints. The foundation commits at least $1 billion (£742 million) over the next two years towards making AI more accessible by funding healthcare, education, agriculture, and digital infrastructure projects that include local-language datasets.

Written for “AI Equity Concerns” on 2026-11-01, grounded in this article and the 0 other(s) covering the same event.

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This article reads leans left and hedges 29% of its claims. Each row says how that neighbour differs.

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⚖️ Leans left Hedges 17 of 70 claims Outlet record 66/100

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How this article was measured signals, leaning charts, publisher record, byline, topics and claims

Signals How these are calculated →

Claims extracted

sentences that state something as happening or true

Uncertain

29%

4 of 14 hedged ("reportedly", "may", "according to")

Leaning

Leans left

of the writing, not the subject · beta estimate

Publisher signals

59/100

The Independent's corrections and hedging, across everything collected from it. Not a measure of accuracy.

Outlets on this story

Technology

Same framing elsewhere

articles that frame the event the way this one does

Analyzed 2026-09-15 · how these are computed

How this is being covered How these are calculated →

Article leaning vs. publisher reliability

Source leaning vs. consistency

Publisher

The Independent · 3463 article(s) · 8 correction(s) detected

Running correction rate · 8 correction(s)

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Who wrote this

Liz Cookman

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Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.

All 8 articles by Liz Cookman →

Topics

Ethiopia Foundation Iowa Nigeria the Gates Foundation

Subjects

Bill Gates PERSON · 1× Ethiopia GPE · 1× Foundation ORG · 1× India GPE · 1× Iowa GPE · 1× Kenyan NORP · 1× Nigeria GPE · 1× Sierra Leone GPE · 1× The Gates Foundation’s ORG · 1× the Gates Foundation ORG · 1×

Narrative

The foundation is committing at least $1 billion (£742 million) over the next two years to efforts to make AI more accessible, with funding going to healthcare, education, agriculture and towards digital infrastructure, such as local-language datasets.

framing: mixed · carried by 1 article(s) · first seen 2026-09-15

🔮 A system designed for a commercial farmer in Iowa, for example, may not understand the crops, pests, markets or constraints facing a smallholder in Ethiopia.

2026-09-15 · The Independent

Billions of people could be left behind by AI because it doesn’t understand their needs, Gates Foundation warns · mixed framing

Claims (14 extracted, 4 hedged)

Billions of people risk being left behind by artificial intelligence because it does not understand their languages or the conditions they live in, the Gates Foundation has warned. asserted

Foundation → risk → languages

The rapid rise in the use of AI risks widening the gap between rich and poor unless it is deliberately built to serve people in the world’s poorest countries, the Foundation’s annual report on global progress found. asserted

report → risk → progress

More than 90 per cent of the data used to train early large language models came from English-language sources, with leading AI speech-recognition systems makeing errors less than 6 per cent of the time in English. asserted

systems → use → English

In Yoruba, spoken widely in Nigeria and elsewhere in west Africa, the error rate is ten times higher. asserted

rate → speak → Africa

AI tools also risk failing when they are transplanted from wealthy countries into poorer ones without local data, the foundation found. asserted

foundation → risk → data

A system designed for a commercial farmer in Iowa, for example, may not understand the crops, pests, markets or constraints facing a smallholder in Ethiopia. uncertain

system → design → Ethiopia

The Gates Foundation’s 2026 Goalkeepers Report, published Tuesday, also warned that, left to the market, the most capable AI tools are likely to be built first for the people and institutions able to pay for them, rather than those who could benefit from them most. uncertain

who → publish → them

However, it also highlights how AI could also help close huge shortages of doctors, teachers and agricultural advisers in poorer countries, by putting specialist knowledge in the hands of frontline workers. uncertain

AI → highlight → workers

funding → commit → datasets

“AI could be a great equalizer – or widen the gap. uncertain

AI → widen → gap

It’s a present-tense choice,” Bill Gates said in the report. asserted

Gates → ’ → report

“The decisions being 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 added. asserted

he → make → least

Early projects include an AI system that has improved diagnostic accuracy in Kenyan clinics, education tools showing large learning gains in Sierra Leone and the US, and an agricultural service now used by more than 740,000 farmers in India. asserted

that → include → India

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project asserted

article → produce → project