Artificial intelligence is creating a new global linguistic hierarchy
Fuente:
arXiv
Enregistré dans:
| Auteurs principaux: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2026
|
| Sujets: | |
| Accès en ligne: | |
| Tags: |
Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
|
| _version_ | 1866912900477616128 |
|---|---|
| author | Occhini, Giulia Tanaka-Ishii, Kumiko Barford, Anna Tikochinski, Refael Hu, Songbo Reichart, Roi Zhou, Yijie Claus, Hannah Petti, Ulla Vulić, Ivan Debnath, Ramit Korhonen, Anna |
| author_facet | Occhini, Giulia Tanaka-Ishii, Kumiko Barford, Anna Tikochinski, Refael Hu, Songbo Reichart, Roi Zhou, Yijie Claus, Hannah Petti, Ulla Vulić, Ivan Debnath, Ramit Korhonen, Anna |
| contents | Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform healthcare, education, governance and socioeconomic equity, but its benefits remain concentrated in a small number of languages (Bender, 2019; Blasi et al., 2022; Joshi et al., 2020; Ranathunga and de Silva, 2022; Young, 2015). Language AI - the technologies that underpin widely-used conversational systems such as ChatGPT - could provide major benefits if available in people's native languages, yet most of the world's 7,000+ linguistic communities currently lack access and face persistent digital marginalization. Here we present a global longitudinal analysis of social, economic and infrastructural conditions across languages to assess systemic inequalities in language AI. We first analyze the existence of AI resources for 6003 languages. We find that despite efforts of the community to broaden the reach of language technologies (Bapna et al., 2022; Costa-Jussà et al., 2022), the dominance of a handful of languages is exacerbating disparities on an unprecedented scale, with divides widening exponentially rather than narrowing. Further, we contrast the longitudinal diffusion of AI with that of earlier IT technologies, revealing a distinctive hype-driven pattern of spread. To translate our findings into practical insights and guide prioritization efforts, we introduce the Language AI Readiness Index (EQUATE), which maps the state of technological, socio-economic, and infrastructural prerequisites for AI deployment across languages. The index highlights communities where capacity exists but remains underutilized, and provides a framework for accelerating more equitable diffusion of language AI. Our work contributes to setting the baseline for a transition towards more sustainable and equitable language technologies. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_12018 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Artificial intelligence is creating a new global linguistic hierarchy Occhini, Giulia Tanaka-Ishii, Kumiko Barford, Anna Tikochinski, Refael Hu, Songbo Reichart, Roi Zhou, Yijie Claus, Hannah Petti, Ulla Vulić, Ivan Debnath, Ramit Korhonen, Anna Computers and Society Computation and Language Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform healthcare, education, governance and socioeconomic equity, but its benefits remain concentrated in a small number of languages (Bender, 2019; Blasi et al., 2022; Joshi et al., 2020; Ranathunga and de Silva, 2022; Young, 2015). Language AI - the technologies that underpin widely-used conversational systems such as ChatGPT - could provide major benefits if available in people's native languages, yet most of the world's 7,000+ linguistic communities currently lack access and face persistent digital marginalization. Here we present a global longitudinal analysis of social, economic and infrastructural conditions across languages to assess systemic inequalities in language AI. We first analyze the existence of AI resources for 6003 languages. We find that despite efforts of the community to broaden the reach of language technologies (Bapna et al., 2022; Costa-Jussà et al., 2022), the dominance of a handful of languages is exacerbating disparities on an unprecedented scale, with divides widening exponentially rather than narrowing. Further, we contrast the longitudinal diffusion of AI with that of earlier IT technologies, revealing a distinctive hype-driven pattern of spread. To translate our findings into practical insights and guide prioritization efforts, we introduce the Language AI Readiness Index (EQUATE), which maps the state of technological, socio-economic, and infrastructural prerequisites for AI deployment across languages. The index highlights communities where capacity exists but remains underutilized, and provides a framework for accelerating more equitable diffusion of language AI. Our work contributes to setting the baseline for a transition towards more sustainable and equitable language technologies. |
| title | Artificial intelligence is creating a new global linguistic hierarchy |
| topic | Computers and Society Computation and Language |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12018 |