About | EQUATE

Language AI has the potential to transform communication, education, healthcare, public services, and many other essential areas of human life. When available in people’s native languages, it can improve access to information, expand meaningful participation, and contribute to many aspects of sustainable development.

Yet today, the benefits of language AI are distributed highly unevenly. Despite more than 7,000 living languages worldwide, only a small fraction have meaningful AI coverage. Most tools and models serve a small number of dominant languages, primarily associated with the Global North. The majority of linguistic communities remain digitally underrepresented, reflecting structural inequalities in data availability, infrastructure, and investment.

EQUATE (Towards Globally Equitable Language Technologies) is an interdisciplinary project focused on advancing the equity of language AI through measurement of disparities, resource development, fundamental Natural Language Processing (NLP) research, practical guidance and case studies that demonstrate how language AI can support global development.

This site introduces the EQUATE Language AI Readiness Index (Occhini et al., 2026), which assesses the readiness of languages and their speaker communities for language technologies. By integrating indicators of AI resources, digital infrastructure, and socioeconomic conditions, the Index provides a systematic global view of where gaps persist and where targeted investment could have transformative impact.

In addition, we introduce COACT - a community-centered, participatory and actionable roadmap to equitable language AI (Petti et al., 2026). It integrates insights from NLP, Human-Computer Interaction, international development, and participatory research to propose a unified approach to planning, fieldwork, development, deployment, and long-term maintenance of language technologies. COACT provides concrete guidance for researchers and developers seeking to build Language AI that is contextually grounded, collaboratively shaped, and globally inclusive.

Our team is now conducting case studies to examine the needs and potential of language AI in addressing human development challenges around the world. These include work on e.g., disaster risk reduction in Nepal, green jobs and climate resilience in Uganda, language and cultural preservation in Nepal and Peru, and technological needs assessments in Indonesia.

On the technical AI side, the wider EQUATE team is addressing diverse methodological challenges — from small language models to culturally aware, sample-efficient, and transparent techniques — to support more equitable language technologies.

We look forward to sharing more insights and outcomes from this work in the months ahead!

References

Occhini, G., Tanaka-Ishii, K., Barford, A., Tikochinski, R., Hu, S., Reichart, R., Zhou, Y., Claus, H., Petti, U., Vulić, I., Debnath, R., & Korhonen, A. (2026). Artificial intelligence is creating a new global linguistic hierarchy (arXiv:2602.12018). arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12018

Petti, U., Claus, H. M., Barford, A., Sadek, M., Reichart,R., Korhonen, A. (2026). COACT – A Community-centered, Participatory and Actionable Roadmap for Equitable Language AI. Under Review. Preprint available at https://ltl.mmll.cam.ac.uk/coact.pdf