Popken and Raman: 56 experts across 24 countries on LLM use

Two researchers interviewed 56 experts across 24 countries in seven regions to see how large language models are actually being used, Betsy Popken and Vyoma Raman write in Tech Policy Press.

"The critical gaps that LLMs are used to fill contribute to the generally positive attitudes toward LLMs expressed by the people we interviewed in South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa," the authors write.

The examples are specific. In Singapore, LLMs are used in small claims tribunals to provide legal information to litigants. In South Africa, journalists use LLMs for research and writing stories that tend to be more formulaic, such as those based on press releases or sporting events; in India, journalists rely on them for sports reporting, weather reports, and business stories on market shares. In the United Arab Emirates, one interviewee described an AI tutor providing personalized learning to thousands of students.

The access gap is blunt. Mexican educators have used LLMs innovatively in classrooms, but the piece points to schools in some regions having access to only a single computer for the entire building.

The recommendation cuts against how the industry currently benchmarks. "Model evaluations can be intentionally designed around human rights impacts," the authors write, adding that "human rights stakeholder engagement is precisely designed to consider how geopolitics, resource and access disparities, and other factors shape how people use LLMs." Two experts on our Who's Who radar shared the piece the day it went up.