5 minEconomy
Philanthropy Leaders Urge Fairer Distribution of AI Gains
As AI creates new fortunes, humanitarian leaders are pressing a new generation of philanthropists to direct more of that wealth toward the world's poorest and most crisis-hit regions, where aid budgets are shrinking and needs are greatest.
The artificial intelligence boom is poised to create a new generation of billionaires and millionaires, and with them a new generation of philanthropists. The question now facing the humanitarian sector is whether that wealth will be directed toward the places where it can do the most good, or whether it will follow the familiar pattern of giving that has largely left the world's poorest people behind.
That debate is taking on new urgency as official development assistance from Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries fell by a historic 23.1% in 2025. As governments retreat from global problems, humanitarian leaders argue that private giving must provide some balance in a world that is clearly out of balance. Around 94% of American philanthropy is spent inside the United States, even though the rest of the world is where needs are greatest and where the gains from philanthropy can be largest.
The numbers tell a stark story. The 20 countries at greatest risk of a worsening humanitarian crisis, ranked annually by the International Rescue Committee in its Emergency Watchlist, represent just 12% of the global population but 90% of those in humanitarian need. In these places, led by regions such as Sudan, Gaza and South Sudan, children are three times more likely to die before their fifth birthday and 10 times more likely to grow up in extreme poverty than children born elsewhere. The people living there have done the least to contribute to climate change, yet face the combined pressures of climate change and conflict while receiving the least support to adapt.
The case for smarter giving rests on an evidence revolution over the past two decades. Real-time data, randomized controlled trials, cost-effectiveness and cost-efficiency analysis, and predictive analytics have transformed what humanitarians know about how to help people survive and recover from crisis. The IRC alone has conducted more than 50 impact evaluations since 2020 and 500 cost analyses, allowing it to measure not simply whether an intervention works but how much it costs and how far each additional dollar can go.
Those tools have produced concrete results. Vaccine shots have been delivered at just $2 a shot in places like Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, with negotiations with armed groups along the way to reach populations otherwise cut off from healthcare. Local health workers can now diagnose and treat acute malnutrition directly in communities, an approach with a 92% recovery rate that is 20% more cost-effective, allowing more children to be helped for the same money. Violence against women and children has been reduced by more than 70% when the two are tackled together. In Afghanistan, clients who received aid in advance of climate disasters were three times less likely to fall further into poverty.
Technology developed in Silicon Valley can also serve the least fortunate. The IRC's global digital helpdesk, Signpost, has reached 20 million people forced to flee crisis in 12 languages with timely, life-saving information, developed with the help of leading technology companies. The scale of the challenge remains daunting: 43 million children are acutely malnourished, 20 million lack full immunization, more than 300 million people are hungry, and hundreds of thousands of women die in childbirth in fragile states alone. But these are problems the sector knows how to solve at manageable, in fact low, cost.
The argument from humanitarian leaders is that the AI revolution will generate more resources in the form of free time, insights and funds, and that those resources need to be spent in the right places. Philanthropy, they contend, should be hard-headed as well as big-hearted, focused on outcomes rather than visibility and on adding value rather than collecting praise. In a world where distance no longer needs to be the enemy of confidence, the case for thinking globally about where to make a difference has never been stronger.
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