Meta's 'Future for Everyone' letter draws global expert critique

On August 10, Mark Zuckerberg published a letter titled "The Future for Everyone," pitching wider AI access across countries and companies as "the path to a positive AI future." Researchers and policy leads from the Global South, canvassed by Rest of World, rejected the framing.

"Meta has grossly overstated the economic benefits of its data centers," said Chinasa T. Okolo, founder of Technecultura and policy lead at Black in AI. The employment benefits, she noted, concentrate during the construction phase, while African countries hosting compute face health and environmental risks with thin regulatory oversight. Kenya is pausing a Microsoft and G42-backed geothermal data center.

Sagar Vishnoi, director of Future Shift Labs, argued that Zuckerberg's "everyone" leaves out speakers of low-resource languages, shared-device households, and communities with intermittent connectivity. Mark Mulobi of the Digital Impact Alliance pointed at the missing pieces on the ground: electricity, internet speed, affordable devices, and investment in African languages.

Abeba Birhane, who runs the AI Accountability Lab at Trinity College Dublin, was blunter: "It's laughable." Juan Ortiz-Freuler of the Non-Aligned Technologies Movement located the pattern one level up: "Meta is so big it runs afoul of many different interest groups."

Priya Vora, CEO of the Digital Impact Alliance, said the letter addresses participation but not trust.

Two experts in our directory have circulated the roundup.