AI in Africa fueled by what would have been tax dollars (Bill Gates as Upgraded-with-LLM White Savior)

Let’s check in on what would have been our tax dollars (capital gains tax on appreciated Microsoft stock) if not for our wise policy of allowing rich douches to deduct unlimited amounts for “charity” (not to be confused with “vanity”!)… “Gates Foundation Pledges $1 Billion to Combat A.I. Inequality” (New York Times, today):

The foundation’s annual Goalkeepers report, released on Monday, advocated an urgent effort to ensure that A.I. “helps narrow gaps between the richest and poorest rather than widening them.”

The foundation said that it would divide the new funding among external groups working on its priorities, spanning work like encouraging A.I. use among doctors, farmers and teachers, or developing data sets in more languages.

Last month, Mr. Gates warned that A.I. would spread across the economy, possibly causing job losses across the economy and leaving little room for one industry to absorb the refugees from another. The biggest tech companies in the world, including Microsoft, are racing to help corporate customers adopt A.I., and have said it could replace many workers.

The visionary was telling Americans to bulk up on low-skill immigrants just a year before Google kicked off the LLM revolution by publishing its transformer architecture (BBC 2016):

The billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has told the BBC that the United States “should set a better example” by taking in more refugees.

Mr Gates said his home country “had the capacity” to follow the examples of Germany and Sweden, who were “to be congratulated” for welcoming migrants.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Gates added that governments were dealing with “tight budgets”. However, he emphasised that the issue was largely a political one, and that “the total number of refugees is not a world record”.

The statement about “tight budgets” is confusing. We’re informed that low-skill migrants make a society richer. If true, why is a government budget a limiting factor? Separately, how has Germany done economically and culturally since 2016 thanks to its virtuous refugee policy? The refugees of 2016 are now fully established in the German labor market. With unprecedented levels of low-skill immigrant residents, Germany should thus be experiencing an unprecedented economic boom. The Wikipedia page titled “German economic crisis (2022–present)” says “[Germany] became the worst-performing major economy globally in 2023” (attributed to “slowing immigration to Germany” because, of course, the fix when open borders doesn’t work is more-open borders).

How about Sweden? With government at 50% of GDP, the country was roughly evenly balanced between those who benefit from a larger government and those who are harmed by an expansion of government, welfare, etc. (The U.S. percentage of GDP devoted to government is similar if we include nominally “private” (but heavily regulated) health care.) In a recent narrowly-decided election, the balance was tipped to the “expand the government and keep the borders open” party by immigrant voters (about 13% of those eligible; source; see also this X post).

Was Gates’s 2016 statement due to the crisp mountain air at Davos? No.

the U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name. (Bill Gates, quoted in Rolling Stone 2014)

Why do Africans need a snow white savior and 7 dwarf NGOs to tell them how to use ChatGPT? Is this new Gates Foundation program an example of epistemic injustice? (Wikipedia: “Epistemic injustice occurs when an individual or group is wronged in their “capacity as a knower”, meaning that their ability to produce knowledge is called into question.”) Here’s a still frame from Bill Gates’s video:

ChatGPT says that it is in the Wolof language, spoken in “Senegal and also in The Gambia and Mauritania”. ChatGPT adds “I can usually read, translate, summarize, and explain Wolof documents, especially standard written Wolof.” So the video example of how AI doesn’t work for African languages is provided in a language that the most familiar AI understands well enough to translate.

(ChatGPT identifies the photo as likely from Saloum, Senegal and can give some history: “religiously motivated Muslim violence and coercive Islamization occurred in Saloum, especially during Maba Diakhou Bâ’s jihad of the 1860s”; it was a peaceful jihad according to George W. Bush that resulted in Muslims becoming 97 percent of the population in Senegal (state.gov))

Readers: since you’ll have to pick up the slack and pay the taxes that Bill Gates skipped on via his foundation, what do you think of this program? If Gates Foundation employees aren’t going to work at a company training and/or running an LLM how are they going to have a significant effect on what AI can do for the Africans that the Gates Foundation purports to understand? Unless they think that Africans are stupid, wouldn’t it make more sense just to give $1 billion to Africans and let them spend it on whatever they believe that they need? Even if having trained do-gooders spend money rather than letting the purported beneficiaries choose, is the local language idea a good one? A lot of people get motivated to learn widely-spoken languages because proficiency will enable them to play a desired videogame or watch and understand a movie (estimate of at least 200 million English learners for video gaming in 2020). Imagine the motivation for someone in Senegal to learn French or English if that were the only way to take advantage of AI (which, of course, it currently isn’t since ChatGPT actually does understand Wolof and 80 percent of Senegal’s adults already have smartphones).

Finally, if AI is unsafe, which Bill Gates says it is, why would working to make an unsafe technology more widespread in Africa, or anywhere else, be a noble endeavor?

A related classic from the pre-AI era… “For God’s Sake, Please Stop the Aid!” (Der Spiegel):

The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor. Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa’s problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unsrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN’s World Food Program.

… believe me, Africa existed before you Europeans came along. And we didn’t do all that poorly either.

Loosely related, my latest way of responding to anyone in academia who expresses an interest in AI safety, AI regulation (now that Trump is anti-regulation, all of my academic friends are very keen on government-imposed restrictions), etc.:

I do feel unsafe. Current models are close to PhD-level intelligence. At some point in 2027, they’re expected to achieve the intelligence of a human who decided not to enter a PhD program.

Not very related, my X response to a New York Times article about the horror of Sydney Sweeney being shown to the general public:

Thank you for highlighting this important issue. As someone who feels physically ill after exposure to photos of Sydney Sweeney, I feel seen. In case it helps others, I find that the wave of nausea can be reduced by looking at photos of Megan Rapinoe kneeling during the National… pic.twitter.com/jFCnNs4Lja

— Philip Greenspun (@PhilipGreenspun) September 15, 2026