How philanthropy can thwart the 'makers vs takers' approach to AI

PARTNER CONTENT By Michele Jawando

Artificial intelligence has enormous power to shape our world. But many discussions about AI exclude the vast majority of the world’s voices. Instead, a handful of wealthy countries are driving global AI development and governance, while low and middle-income countries are left to navigate the impacts of this technology without reaping the benefits of its growth. 

An estimate by PwC suggests that the global economic impact of AI could surpass $15.7 trillion by 2030, but almost 70% of those gains will be focused on China and North America. How can developing nations claim their fair share when they're systematically excluded from the decisions that affect their future? A recent scan by the United Nations’ Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence looked at a sample of international governance initiatives related to AI over the past five years. Only Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States were included in all seven. One hundred and eighteen countries were not part of a single one. 

AI may be a cutting-edge technology, but this pernicious “makers versus takers” dichotomy is age-old. We must flip this tired aphorism on its head. If AI is truly going to build shared global prosperity, it will only happen by engaging and empowering historically under-represented communities—and philanthropy can help make this happen. 

First, philanthropies can help bridge regional divides and inspire greater global cooperation. It’s clear that AI itself doesn’t recognize national borders: Consider that DeepSeek—the much discussed Chinese open-source alternative to ChatGPT—was downloaded by millions of Americans within days of its release. This is far from the only instance of AI adoption extending far beyond its “maker’s” country of origin: A 2024 survey of more than 30,000 global organizations found that two-thirds of respondents reported regular use of AI, a massive spike in adoption across every region of the world.

The impacts of AI extend beyond its global adoption. AI’s resource-intensive development process is already threatening to exert a heavy toll on our planet, and those harms may be exacerbated in vulnerable nations that are less developed, landlocked or small islands. And as AI spreads across industries around the world, workers in the world’s poorest countries are often at highest risk of job replacement. The World Bank estimates up to 5% of jobs are at risk of AI job replacement in Latin American and the Caribbean alone, with women most likely to be affected. 

Unlike companies motivated by profit or governments motivated by politics, philanthropy is well-positioned to invest directly in historically underserved societies, reach across national boundaries and supplement global coordination. And the global reach and impact of AI means all philanthropies—even those that don’t focus on tech policy or global development—should be helping guide its development. 

Second, we know diverse representation is critical to building a digital future that benefits all—and philanthropies can facilitate this process. It’s simple: If AI is developed with limited datasets, and governed solely by a small group of similar people, it is not going to reflect the needs, linguistic variety and perspectives of our diverse world. This is particularly important in the global context, given AI’s enormous power to either reinforce or remediate existing global divides. From historical land grabs to ongoing fights over natural resources around the world, we know that wealthier nations have historically exploited value from poorer countries—leading to massive gaps in economic prosperity, health and well-being. AI can perpetuate those inequities, but it also offers the opportunity to close these historic gaps through shared infrastructure and economic benefits. But only if it's developed thoughtfully. 

That’s where philanthropy comes in. At Omidyar Network, we are working to expand who finances, creates and governs AI—including through work with the U.S. National Artificial Intelligence Research Pilot to create publicly available datasets and broaden access to compute. And at a global level, we are supporting the UN’s High-level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence. Historically, our work outside the United States has championed secure, open-source and privacy-by-design solutions that empower communities and governments. As a founding member of MOSIP, we've helped create an open-source digital identity system now implemented in 22 countries, set to impact over 400 million people, while establishing crucial partnerships with the UN Economic Commission for Africa and World Bank's ID4D to strengthen policy frameworks and technical capacity. 

Through strategic investments, including a $300 million Co-Develop fund for digital public goods, we're actively shaping the future of digital infrastructure. Our approach emphasizes essential principles including privacy and security by design, open systems architecture and vendor independence, ensuring that digital infrastructure serve as a foundation for inclusive, responsible and sustainable development all around the world.

Finally, philanthropy can help low and middle-income countries overcome their unique cost and research barriers within the AI space. By offering outside funding, philanthropies can help nations leapfrog the high upstart costs of AI investment and weather quick depreciation of technology as AI technology rapidly modernizes. Philanthropy can help support nations outside North America, Europe and China in establishing beneficial open data sharing arrangements—allowing them to maintain agency over their own data while still benefiting from data-sharing. And by facilitating research into the urgency of global coordination, philanthropies can elevate the perspectives of under-represented countries and inspire a more collective, unified approach to AI. Omidyar Network was proud to support the completion of the 2024 Global Action Forum Report, which is already helping to raise awareness of this dichotomy and the need for change. But there is much more work to be done. 

While our organization’s philanthropic focus is largely on the United States, we recognize that in order to successfully bend the arc of AI development toward greater possibility, prosperity and shared power for all, we need to upend the “makers versus takers” divide on a global scale. At Omidyar Network, we believe philanthropy has a critical role to play in making this happen. 

Michele Jawando is the senior vice president of programs at Omidyar Network