The Gates Foundation announced this week it will spend $1 billion over the next two years to expand access to artificial intelligence in the developing world and in American classrooms, a pledge unveiled Tuesday alongside the foundation's annual Goalkeepers report tracking progress toward United Nations development goals. The announcement lands just as world leaders gather in New York for the UN General Assembly's high-level week.

Of the $1 billion, roughly $400 million is earmarked for education tools — including AI systems designed to help teachers rework lesson plans around the concepts their classes are struggling with most — while another $400 million will go toward AI-driven healthcare applications. A further $100 million will fund AI models trained in underserved languages, and $100 million more will support agricultural technology for small farmers. Separately, OpenAI has committed $50 million alongside the foundation to train health workers in Rwanda.

A Foundation Warning About Its Own Bet

What makes the pledge notable is the foundation's own candor about the risks. Bill Gates framed the stakes bluntly: "How will we use this technology to make the world a fairer place and keep it from widening the divide between rich and poor?" according to the Associated Press. The foundation's report itself flags dangers including fraud, disinformation, surveillance and the possibility that advanced AI models could act in ways their developers didn't intend.

That candor hasn't stopped educators from pushing back on the education slice of the pledge specifically. Teachers interviewed by Fortune warned the initiative could "end up widening" the very achievement gaps it's designed to close, noting that reading and math scores have slipped in some districts since classroom technology and computer-based testing became widespread — a track record that makes some skeptical a new wave of AI tools will fare better without careful design.

"Too many tools have been adopted without evidence they work," the foundation's own strategy document concedes, insisting teachers must "remain central" to how the technology is used.

A Gates Foundation spokesperson said the education tools will first be piloted in schools serving large shares of low-income students, bundled with teacher training, and evaluated by independent researchers before any wider rollout — an attempt to head off the kind of unproven, top-down tech pushes that have burned school districts before.

The pledge also comes with a pointed message for Washington. Foundation CEO Mark Suzman said the group has "not given up on the U.S." despite what he called "a challenging period" with the federal government on foreign assistance and development funding, signaling the foundation intends to keep lobbying Congress and the administration even as it leans more heavily on private philanthropic dollars to fill funding gaps.

The real test now shifts from press release to classroom. Independent evaluations of the pilot programs are expected to shape whether the $400 million education bet scales nationally and internationally — or becomes another cautionary tale about ed-tech promises outrunning evidence.