The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has selected about 50 grant recipients who are developing global health and development solutions for their communities using AI- enabled Large Language Models (LLMs).

Guided by the goal of reducing global inequity, the Foundation, in a statement on Wednesday, August 9, 2023, said the call for proposals specifically targeted researchers and innovators in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

It stated that each recipient will receive up to $100,000 to advance its research project, for a total of $5 million in grants.

It added that the use of AI-driven LLM technology has the potential to help solve some of the world’s toughest health and development challenges.

“Too often, advances in technology deliver uneven benefits in many parts of the world due to existing patterns of discrimination, inequality, and bias,” said Juliana Rotich, co-founder of iHub, an incubator for Nairobi’s young technology entrepreneurs and who has agreed to serve on the foundation’s new AI Ethics and Safety Advisory committee.

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“AI is no different, with most of the tools being developed in the Global North using data from lower-resourced regions that is often incomplete or inaccurate.

“To realize the full potential of AI, it must be developed responsibly and ethically, with the needs of the end user in mind. Solutions can be transformative when they are locally inspired.”

The Foundation further stated that the selection is part of the its Grand Challenges program, a family of initiatives fostering innovation to solve pressing global health and development problems.

It noted that it received more than 1,300 proposals, more than 80 per cent of which were from LMICs, within two weeks of posting its request for proposals.

“The nearly 50 selected projects from 17 LMICs are aligned with the foundation’s goal of fostering a global innovation ecosystem in places where it will have the most impact.

“Each recipient will receive up to US$100,000 to advance its research project, for a total of US$5 million in grants.

“The findings of these projects will be shared at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Dakar, Senegal, this October.

“The vibrant energy, boundless creativity, and unwavering commitment from innovators to tackle the most vexing challenges has sparked a wave of interest and excitement in the positive impact AI can have in the lives of the vulnerable.

“These local innovators are harnessing the seismic power of AI and LLMs in ways that can be paradigm-shifting for their local communities and beyond. We believe the most impactful technological advancements include those that begin and end with the people they affect most.”

According to the Foundation, Grand Challenges family of programs stems from a century-old idea that crowdsourcing solutions to a defined set of unsolved problems can spark innovation and accelerate progress.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its Grand Challenges funding partners first used Challenges—open requests for grant proposals—in 2003 to focus attention and effort on pressing global health and development problems for those most in need.

Together, Grand Challenges partners have awarded more than 3,600 grants to a diverse pool of problem solvers in more than 100 countries, while at the same time fostering a global innovation ecosystem in places where it will have the most impact.

The Star