AI safety is designed in the West, and failing users everywhere
Rest of World Rina Chandran
AI companies in the West paused training or published safety plans while trust-and-safety frameworks still fail users in many countries due to safety decisions being defined and evaluated with a narrow set of assumptions. More than two-thirds of chatbots do not adequately account for dialects or recognize urgency cues, which leads to errors that can affect health and other decisions. The result is a widening “AI divide” where English-speaking users are safer than users of low-resource languages, pushing governments and UN-linked efforts to invest in local safety infrastructure and oversight.
Why it matters
OpenAI’s pause shows the risks of rapid AI development, as safety frameworks fail to account for non-Western languages and contexts where harms are felt most.
