C (4:50)

Yeah, no, I mean, I think you really can't stress enough that this was about putting the Global south front and center. I think the location was highly symbolic. You're talking India, nation of nearly like 1.5 billion people with rapid development, progress, huge amount of tech talent themselves. And it seems like the message, like Indian Prime Minister Modi said, you know, we don't want humans to become data points or resource material. You know, we should democratize AI, make it a platform for inclusion, for empowerment, especially for the Global South. I feel like that message really resonated because, you know, you had people there, you know, apparently there were lots of tech heavy hitters. There was also a lot of young people. There's a lot of enthusiasm in spite of all the hurdles, the traffic and all the kind of hiccups that we heard about. You know, I think that message really resonated because one, the Global south just basically does not want to be left behind. But two, as you said, governance, you know, shaping the rules of the road, moving forward with AI, especially given how quickly everything is happening. And three, not being looked at through the prism of the US China geopolitical rivalry. I think that was like a point that Katherine Davidson wrote about pretty frequently that people talked about. And again, I think a lot of the people talked about, you know, as a public good, as something that can further development goals. And that's different than necessarily the US Silicon Valley, like break it and go kind of model Europe, very much more heavy regulatory approach. You know, it's, it's thinking of the global public good, it's thinking of trustworthy AI, safe AI, inclusive AI. And I think, you know, that Katherine talked to a lot of these people that made the same points and there was a lot of enthusiasm there. I think the question is execution, as it always is at these kind of big events. You know, is it a bit Pollyannish to think that AI will push, prioritize development goals or the global good? You know, you have here, just to digress a bit like there's a debate here in the US of anthropic, in the Pentagon, a Defense Department and maybe like lowering some of its safety standards and not allowing mass surveillance. These are all questions that come up, like literally this morning, such a rapidly changing technology and the conversations are taking place so much in higher income countries. And that's where I think at least the summit allowed the Global south to have a say in the conversation. Will it continue? I don't know, but it was a good point. I don't want to say starting point, but it was a good point.

B (7:25)

I want to jump in on one thing here because Anna mentioned something about like the Silicon Valley approach, you know, move fast and break things. That is one thing that's happening here is just convergence, or perhaps better to say clashing of worldviews and perspectives on, on how we should proceed. And again, part of the point of holding this summit in India and a big emphasis here was the Global south needs a voice. But when we say the Global south, obviously that's a very diverse set of actors as well. One of the sources I spoke with coming out of the summit, when I asked sort of what was missing in our coverage or what was missing from the summit, what I actually heard is that she was surprised to not see more voices from the African continent. So certainly there was a lot of global participation, I know, including many really interesting social entrepreneurs that Katherine highlighted in her coverage. But what I'm hearing is we didn't see African heads of state, we didn't see folks from the African Union, some ICT ministers, but not the kind of leadership you would hope to see. And part of what I've also heard from sources is that India's view of AI is not necessarily going to be the Global South's view of AI and that the way this unfolds across the African continent is going to look quite different. So I want to highlight something that I thought was really valuable from Katherine's reporting. She spoke with Rachel Adams, founder and CEO of the Global center on AI Governance. And she talked about a third way on AI regulation. So this third way being distinct from the US wanting unchecked innovation and then Europe having a quite heavy regulatory approach, this third way would focus on impact. And what she says is in the Global South, I think you're seeing a lot more countries starting from the premise of how do we build safe, inclusive, trustworthy and useful technologies that help our people with the issues they're most concerned about. And that's about achieving development priorities. But what I would add is, and part of what I hope to unpack in this AI podcast, India wants to see this third wave, but like, what does that look like across the African continent? So some of the folks I'll be talking with on the podcast include, and not just African continent, elsewhere in low and middle income countries. So I'll be talking with Kate Kallet, who's the entrepreneur behind Amini, building data infrastructure on the African continent. I'll Be talking with Jonathan Reed, the Tech Minister from Barbados. You know, the Global south needs a voice, but actually there are many voices across the Global south and how do we include them in the global conversation on AI? I will note that the next forum worth mentioning to our DEVEX audience, the next AI impact summit, will be in Switzerland in 2027. That's what I've been reading. It was kind of previewed at Davos and did a little research ahead of this conversation. That seems to be the case. But I think, you know, at this forum and across these other moments, global participation is really critical. And that was another question I asked in our first podcast this week with Amandeep Singh Gill. With all these disparate conversations, like, how do you really connect the dots between them? I feel like every day it's a new forum, a new agreement, a new declaration, and, and yet, you know, in the meantime, the technology moves rapidly. Ensuring that we have that kind of global participation is critical, but super complicated. So how do we do it?

C (10:20)

I thought it was so interesting your, your interview with the UN Tech Envoy, you know, because, because it's true, the conversations are scattered, they're all over the place. It's such a quickly moving, and he suggested at least in part having those conversations in like a multilateral rule setting environment like the un. Of course, he's the UN Tech Envoy. But you know, I see the skepticism on the, on the flip side of, of, you know, the UN is this slow moving behemoth that doesn't really lend itself to the, the speed and necessarily the innovation that kind of underpins AI. But I thought it was really interesting, you know, when he said that governance, if it's proactive and led by science, can actually accelerate growth. So, you know, I think that it shows that there are options that governance doesn't necessarily mean you stopping, you're slowing down. You know, there is an equitable, more equitable possibility out there.

B (11:16)

Absolutely. And I will mention some news around that point about being science led that came out of the AI Summit. So the Gates foundation was of course in the news for other reasons. With the AI Summit, which I'm sure we'll talk about, Bill Gates was meant to give this big keynote, which many, myself included, were excited about to. As I understood it, this was really going to be the chance for the Gates foundation to share their view on AI and you know, their strategy on AI. He ended up backing out. Ankar Vora filled in. I gave a listen to Ankar Vora's talk and essentially, you know, Ankar Vora is their lead for Africa and India at Gates. Essentially he ended up talking about the transformative potential of AI in health, education and agriculture, which, you know, again is interesting, important to highlight, but we know this, we've heard this from Gates before. They've invested across those areas. The foundation did not have that moment to, I think, share what's next for their AI strategy. And our reporter on the ground, Katherine Davison, had a hard time actually, you know, connecting with someone one on one from Gates. There was a partnership that they launched though, that I do want to mention because I think it's what it points to, what Anna was just talking about on how governance doesn't necessarily have to be a break on innovation, as Amandeep Singh Gil put it. So Gates, together with Novo Nordisk foundation and welcome each contributed 20 million to this new evidence for AI and health initiative. It's going to support locally led evaluations of AI health tools in low and middle income countries. And this points to actually something we're going to explore in one of the podcast episodes across development. When we roll things out, we have to test like, do they work? What are the impacts, what are the unintended consequences? That's hard to do in AI because again, things are moving so rapidly, but it's critical. And so I'm talking to some of the actors who are really pushing for an evidence based approach to AI and global development. That includes Dean Carlin, the former chief economist of USAID who was at the summit, Iqbal Dhaliwal who leads J Pal, who was also at the summit. Temin Ahmadin from the Agency Fund. They're doing some interesting philanthropy in this space of funding evidence and AI. But again, I think speaking of that clashing of cultures and worldviews, often in Silicon Valley there's this feeling that regulation or even that kind of testing and evaluation process, like randomized control trials that are so have really caught on in development, can hold back innovation. But then there are others, the UN Tech Envoy and then apparently Gates as part of this partnership and it was really interesting to see that launch. They feel that evidence actually has to be central to this whole process and they're making investments along those lines. So that's. That was. That was interesting for me to see and I look forward to hearing more from the foundation on it is very

A (14:00)

much a question of kind of who is AI for? Right. It's all very well these guys in Silicon Valley saying we're just going to move forward, we're just going to let it take its course, see what Happens, whatever. But if it's not directed, if, if it's not purposeful, then we end up with a whole bunch of untested assumptions about the purpose of AI, like what, who's it actually supposed to be serving? And I think what we see in the Global south is a concern that this ends up being designed for a bunch of rich white guys using a bunch of rich white guy assumptions that they don't even know that they're making and that therefore it doesn't suit people all over the world, people speaking different languages, people with different needs. And we end up with something that, that's really just one version of AI with an assumption that this is kind of how it's supposed to be. Like they're saying, we don't want rules. Well, there's always rules. The rules that you set when you don't set rules are still a set of rules. And they may not be the rules that like AI is supposed to benefit the people who live on the planet. It's supposed to be of benefit to human beings and to, in theory, if something's working properly, new technology should benefit as many human beings as it possibly can. Because if it's not for the good of human beings, what is it for? Why do we have it? Like, is it just for the benefit

B (15:13)

of the, and I think the community we are constantly reporting on and in touch with that is the community to be voicing that right now because again, decisions are being made every day that's going to determine that future. There was a powerful line by Amandeep Singhil in our podcast where, I mean, he put it well, that, you know, one scenario is that populations in low middle income countries, I mean, he used the term, are slaves of this technology. I mean, the stakes are pretty concerning.

A (15:40)

Yeah, the technology should be the slaves of the people, not the other way around. Like, the other thing that really kind of came out of this for me was this idea that AI for good is like this niche kind of thing that's off to one side and that you have the real AI somewhere else that's actually doing the important stuff. And then obviously we devote a little bit of time and money to AI doing good things. Shouldn't AI be for good from start to finish?

B (16:05)

Right. Interesting you ask that. And just to put one more plug in for our podcast, our next episode coming up next week is with Kanika Ball. So she is the CEO of Evidence Action, which has done a lot of really important scaling work in the global health and development space. And she was so taken by the question you just posed, Dave, that she actually announced she's stepping down as CEO of Evidence Action. She's currently still leading the organization, but she will be leading an effort incubated within Evidence Action called the AI Access Initiative. She actually sat on the board of Anthropic. You know, one of these AI labs, Anthropic has a group called the Long Term Benefit Trust. It's a group of people that included, included Kanika Ball, she was a founding member, and Neil Buddy Shah, who leads the Clinton Health Access Initiative. They were tasked with basically ensuring that Anthropic sticks with its public benefit mission. The company, part of its mission is that it's working for the public benefit. And it's very interesting that they tapped folks in the global development space to help hold them accountable to that. So Kanika sat on this board, the Long Term Benefit Trust. She was asking. The very question you're asking, Dave is like this AI for Good space is all these disparate pilot projects and how are we going to really build the AI for Good ecosystem to ensure that these projects reach real scale and actually benefit hundreds of millions of people, the kind of work Evidence Action was doing. So she launched the AI Access Initiative to do that and basically did a whole landscape analysis to figure out what are the big bets and AI for good. She's hiring a team to invest in those spaces. And interestingly her advisors include folks like Michael Kramer, who is the Nobel Prize winning economist who has really been a leader in evidence based development. He helps set up development innovation ventures at usaid. He's one of her advisors. She also has advisors from companies like Google. And I think it's those kinds of things that bring together folks from the traditional global development community and folks from AI labs and folks from big tech and government leaders and civil society to again like help to shape the decisions happening right now to ensure that this technology is broadly beneficial.

A (18:15)

Okay, so AI for Good is, is actually going to do some.

B (18:19)

No, David, no. I was just going to say I, I think a lot of people share your skepticism of the AI for Good space. And it's part of why I like to highlight not just use case here, use case there. Let's look sector by sector at these different projects. But ask these tough question we're doing in the podcast and I'm really excited to see this AI Access initiative as one effort. More are needed to really figure out like if there's a there there, like what are the spaces where AI can be truly transformative, make bigger bets around those areas versus just kind of remaining in experimentation mode.

A (18:48)

Okay. Rather than carrying on with my cynicism about that, let's talk a little bit.

C (18:53)

You cynical. No, never, never, never.

A (18:56)

Yeah. AI for Good. It's about making people look good. That's why it's called AI for Good. Right.

C (19:01)

See, I opened the way for that. I did.

B (19:03)

Anyway, we have a clashing of perspectives. Who worldviews in this podcast as well. It's a part of it.

A (19:10)

Yeah. I mean, there's obviously huge potential in AI, but I think we coming at it from a European perspective. It is interesting because I think Europeans view this very much as a thing that we are concerned is about to be done to us by the Chinese in the United States. And we don't like either vision very much. But I think at least in Europe, people are looking at each other and going, hey, well, we do have money and computers and technology and power. Power. We should be able to do something about it. And we're all kind of staring at each other going, why can we not sort this out? Whereas I think if you're in the rest of the world, you're looking at it in these giant kind of shifting forces moving around completely outside your control that are just going to wash over you. It's a concerning thing to kind of see. And I think even for people living in the United States or whatever, most of us have no control over this technology that's going to radically reshape how the planet works. And people are starting to ask, I wonder maybe if it might not be a bad idea if we did have the ability to put some reins on this. But so long as the current incumbent remains in the. In the White House, I don't think that's going to happen.

B (20:11)

No, the risks are very real. And yeah, it's important that this community not just be trying to accelerate the benefits for the people that they're focused on, but also mitigate the risks because those same people are the most vulnerable to them.

C (20:29)

The world is facing a range of health threats, from an increase in disease outbreaks to the health impacts of climate change. I'm Jenny Lee Ravello, senior global health reporter for devex. Every Thursday, we bring you exclusive news and insights on how the health sector is finding solutions to these challenges in our free weekly newsletter, Devex Checkout. Visit devex.comnewsletters to subscribe.

A (20:58)

Let's move on and talk a little bit about Gates. As you mentioned already, Bill Gates was conspicuous by his absence at this conference. And in general, Gates staff were conspicuous by their absence anytime there was any journalist anywhere nearby. It's like they discovered the ability to teleport and we did not hear very much from any of them. Let's talk a little bit about that and then let's go on and talk about some more general sort of Gate stuff. So Takhanmou was supposed to be a very high profile part of this conference and they really decided because of all the allegations against their founder to kind of take a step back, is that right?

B (21:35)

Well, I will, I will highlight this. I mean, absolutely, yes, Bill Gates was scheduled for a keynote and there was a lot of excitement around that. And as I mentioned, Ankar Vora ended up filling in for him. But there Gates found the Gates foundation was there in full force. There were many different program officers and folks from the Foundation. I did my best to follow this conference from afar while Katherine Davison was there on the ground. I mean, I can't even count how many sessions. I was scrolling like endlessly on my computer through the sessions. And I actually did search Gates foundation just to see. And there were many, many sessions where folks from the foundation were talking about the really exciting AI investments they are making, whether it's, you know, in health or in languages. That's been a huge emphasis for the Gates foundation, ensuring that all languages really are represented in these large language models. Speaking of the broad benefits. So the foundation did show up. They were well represented across many topics. But yes, Bill Gates was absent. And my understanding, and I confirmed this with Katherine before this interview, is in her many efforts to connect one and on one with folks from the foundation, she was basically ushered away or members of the foundation were ushered away from her to prevent those conversations stations from happening. And as you mentioned, Dave, and I think this is not only in the Foundation's work on AI, but in all the work that they do at this moment when they're trying to manage the narrative at a very difficult time, it's very difficult to do the communications and advocacy work they typically do across AI or any of their different priorities.

A (23:05)

Yes, right now, just at this moment, it seems, seems as if that strategy. No, I was going to make another stupid joke that they seem to have outsourced their communications policy to the trappist Monk Federation. But the. Anyway, so, anyway, so moving on, Hannah, you were going to make an actual important and newsworthy point.

C (23:26)

Well, you know, kind of the not so subtle transition into, you know, what we were talking about. I mean, I think it's interesting because we're seeing on the ground playing out this quandary that the foundation is in. In terms of doing its work and dealing with this explosive scandal of what's going on with Bill Gates and the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And I think we have an article by my. Our colleague Michael Igoe, which I. Which I really think people should check out because it takes kind of a broader view of billionaire philanthropy and asks these hard, moral questions about it. You know, specifically, are we idolizing billionaires who give away their billions, you know, without really holding them to account? There's a historian that Michael talked to who said hypocrisy is at the heart of philanthropy. And she went on to say, it's usually not saints who become industry leaders and amass significant wealth. And I mean, that, to me, resonated because there is truth in that. You know, it's good to be giving to good causes, but, you know, you were likely very cutthroat in getting that kind of money in order to give to the causes. You know, another expert pointed out that perhaps this scandal will allow Gates, the foundation's leadership and employees to focus more on the general public good and analyze that versus being more wedded to Bill Gates specific singular vision of philanthropy. And this, I think, reminded me of an article that Politico did a few years back in terms of, you know, is. It was about COVID 19 and how Bill Gates and a lot of his partners, the foundation's partners, Sepi Gavi, were really kind of controlling the vaccine response, the global response, because a lot of governments were floundering. They, you know, they were struggling to respond. And granted, this probably saved millions of lives. But it goes to show the power that a lot of these foundations now have, and who's holding them accountable and who's questioning whether perhaps Bill Gates again has a very particular vision for eradicating poverty, maternal health, a lot, vaccines, et cetera, all, you know, terrific and effective, you know, interventions. But there are others who say, you know, this is a better way to eradicate poverty, but what are you gonna do as a government, you know, or as an organization and say, well, I have a better way and I'm not gonna take the money, you know, but you have your way, and this is going to help a lot of people. So I am probably going to take your money. I think it's a bigger question than what's going on with Bill Gates, even though that's a huge question. His foundation is enormous. We're in tightened financial, economic constraints, the entire development world, how the foundation in particular moves forward in terms of morale in terms of fundraising, in terms of its advocacy. Bill Gates was the face of it. That's the question. That's one question, and it's important one. But it's also what I think is good about the article is it brings up the bigger questions of billionaire philanthropy and how responsible is it and how good is it that development community relies now especially so heavily on a few high net worth individuals.

A (26:41)

This is a really interesting set of questions, isn't it? I mean, just to place it in context, if Bill Gates was a country, he would be among the top 10 OECD donors in the world. I think, like, it varies from year to year, but he's somewhere around sort of six in the list. You've effectively got five countries that dominate OECD giving the United States, Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. And then beneath them we've got kind of the Dutch and Swedish and people like that. And Bill Gates is in that kind of tier with those countries. So he's a hugely dominant force. And I think probably for devex readers, that's even an underestimate. If we talk about the amount of money that flows into the development sector, into INGOs and private implementers, and the types of people who are, who are expecting to using devex in order to kind of make good decisions about what they do next with the limited resources of their organization. Gates is probably even a bigger source of capital compared to these countries than that. So extraordinarily influential. And this raises a number of questions, one of which is wouldn't it be nice to have a bit more control and scrutiny over what's happening? But then the corollary to that, the, the kind of other side of the coin is, well, there's nothing actually forcing him to give any money away at all. If he decided tomorrow not to hand over $200 billion, he could just keep it, spend it on yachts and there would be nothing anybody could do about it. So it's difficult. Say we don't quite like the way that you're giving this money away. And we think you could do it a bit better. When he could say, well, okay, that's absolutely fine, I'll spend it on paintings and peanuts, whatever I want then. And most billionaires don't give their money away. Most billionaires got rich by acquiring as much as they possibly could. And there's no off button in that acquisition process. That's why they got rich. Most people, when they get rich enough to stop, they've got enough cash, they stop acquiring more. Billionaires are the people where that stop button's broken. And so giving it away in a lot of cases is antithetical to those people. And one difficulty that I have, I think I'm on a little bit of a rant here is that the scrutiny falls disproportionately on the people who do give it away and not on the people who don't. Which is not to say that we should not scrutinize what Bill Gates is up to. I think we absolutely and definitely should. But I think we need to maybe look at the Koch brothers or the like all of the, the other guys in the top 10 list. What are Larry Page, Sergey Brin, what are they giving to? What's Mark Zuckerberg giving to? They're not giving much of the money away at all. Like, so I think it's billionaire philanthropy is a problematic model from start to finish. I think there are many, many.

B (29:25)

And Dave, one thing I think you make a really smart point, and I've thought this often before in philanthropy coverage as well, like accountability is critical, but there are also all those who are not giving their wealth away and those who are giving their wealth away, or at least some fraction of their wealth who could choose to do other things with that money that do not benefit these important causes. One thing I would just add that has not come up right so far in our conversation about Gates that I think will be important in following this story is it's never just been about what the foundation gives. It's also been about them mobilizing others to give. Even though they have so much influence in the space. The foundation has always been quick to highlight that their resources pale in comparison to many of the bilateral donors. Now that's starting to shift as a lot of this bilateral aid goes away. But still, in any given issue area, the foundation has been wary of other donors or anyone kind of going well. The Gates foundation has that covered. So they've always seen it as part of their strategy that it's what they give, but also how they get others to step up. Other bilateral donors, well, that's really hard at this moment in time. But also multilaterals, private sector and other high net worth donors and foundations. The Gates foundation does work on this. There's also the Giving Pledge, which is a whole arm of their work that Bill Gates has really championed getting other billionaires to sign up to give their wealth away. And so I just wanted to flag that as well, that as this story unfolds, it will be important to follow the implications not just for the foundation, but for all their other efforts to get others to step up and support these issues.

A (31:03)

Yeah. And really it is extremely problematic to look at a field that's supposed to be about democracy and equality and equity and see it dominated by billionaires. Those are not the people that we want in charge of the equality effort, I think. But I mean better that they give the money away than don't. But better that we better there weren't any billionaires to start with. I think maybe. I think a lot of our readers might think. Anyway, I think we are going to have to call it a day there. This is as usual, but an absolutely fascinating discussion. I've learned a lot about AI hopefully you've learned a lot about various things, some more useful than others, I suspect. It just remains for me to say thank you very much to our guests, to Anna and to Katherine and to all of you, our listeners and we wish you the very best and we hope you'll be back with us next week.

B (31:54)

Thank you.

C (31:55)

Thank you.

B (31:56)

SA.