The Gates Foundation announced a coalition of 60 initial signatories on 23 September to pursue a five-year goal of making AI tools accessible in the language and voice of an estimated 3.4 billion people whose languages are underrepresented in current models, ANI reported.
Key points
- Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, the World Bank Group and the OpenAI Foundation are among the initial signatories.
- The foundation says members will work on shared language data, benchmarks, models and applications, and responsible deployment.
- The participants plan to develop the coalition’s governance and organisational structure over the year following the announcement.
Gates Foundation draws 60 initial signatories
Bill Gates said the foundation had initially hoped to assemble 10 organisations. The group announced on 23 September includes AI developers Anthropic, Microsoft and Google, alongside the World Bank Group and the OpenAI Foundation. Its membership also spans government ministries, philanthropic organisations, developers and partners involved in implementation.
The foundation describes the five-year aim as enabling people to use AI in their own language and voice. It puts the potential population at an estimated 3.4 billion, while also describing the goal as reaching more than three billion people. Both figures refer to the initiative’s intended reach, rather than people already using a product developed by the coalition.
According to the foundation, the signatories bring expertise in research, model development, funding and public policy. It says participating organisations will contribute according to their capabilities. The foundation has also invited other organisations to join and offer resources and expertise.
The foundation says the commitment connects work already under way across datasets, models, benchmarks, applications and implementation. It describes the initiative as building on years of efforts to improve language and voice capabilities for people whose languages have limited representation in AI systems.
Language data and benchmarks form four workstreams
The coalition’s first proposed area of work is shared, safe infrastructure for open-language data. The foundation says members will pool resources and expertise. That places data alongside model development in the programme, rather than treating the addition of languages to existing applications as its only task.
A second workstream covers benchmarks intended to track progress. Gates told CBS News that he wanted measures of quality relevant to how people discuss subjects such as farming and school, according to ANI. His examples concern how well a tool handles a person’s use of a language, not simply whether that language appears among its options.
The third area is the conversion of language data into AI models and applications that developers can use, the foundation says. The work would involve organisations with different roles in producing data, building models and putting applications into use. Those roles are reflected in the range of initial signatories.
The fourth workstream concerns deployment. The foundation says participants will address privacy, consent and data sovereignty as they make tools available. Those requirements sit beside the technical work on datasets, benchmarks and models in the coalition’s stated programme.
Coalition governance follows 23 September launch
The Gates Foundation and the other signatories plan to develop a governance framework, organisational structure and principal workstreams together over the year following the 23 September announcement. Their stated programme therefore covers both the technical work needed for language access and the arrangements through which a group of 60 organisations will pursue it.
Gates also identified education and healthcare as areas in which he wants AI’s benefits to arrive faster. Speaking to CBS News, he said those uses require engagement with regulated sectors, ANI reported. The coalition’s announced areas of work centre on language access, including the data and applications developers would need to serve speakers of underrepresented languages.
The foundation says organisations joining the initiative can contribute resources and expertise according to their respective capabilities. Its invitation to further participants remains open beyond the 60 initial signatories.
