OpenAI Academy launches with $1M in developer credits for devs in low- and middle-income countries

It’s not school, but the academy is designed to boost the skills and careers of local developers.

I’m talking, of course, about the OpenAI Academy, a new effort announced today from the AI unicorn that will begin by awarding some unspecified number of developers in low- and middle-income countries $1 million in API credits.

The goal? To catalyze economic growth and innovation in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, education, and finance, as well as “ensure that the transformative potential of artificial intelligence is accessible and beneficial to diverse communities worldwide.”

“Many countries have fast-growing technology sectors filled with talented developers and innovative organizations, yet access to advanced training and technical resources is still a significant barrier,” the announcement states. “Investing in the development of local AI talent can have a transformative impact across a range of industries.”

Cynics and skeptics will undoubtedly say this is some form of neo technological colonialism — with the U.S.-based OpenAI seeking to spread its influence and increase dependencies on its technology around the globe.

Yet for devs who receive the credits, it’s hard to imagine them not celebrating being selected and being excited to use OpenAI models to build their own apps that could become thriving new businesses.

Of course, OpenAI will stand to benefit from entrenching itself more among the up-and-coming developers building new startups, but also, there’s nothing that I see in the announcement that says these devs can’t use other AI models simultaneously, nor that they couldn’t one day switch out the underlying API pipelines to other rival providers. It seems like a win-win for devs and OpenAI, to me.

Which countries will be eligible to participate?

OpenAI’s announcement doesn’t clearly state which countries are included in its list of “low and middle-income countries,” but those are categories that the World Bank uses as well, based on gross national income per capita.

In fact, the World Bank divides economies into four income groups—low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high income.

The U.S. and many European nations are high-income, while many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia fall into the low and lower-middle-income categories, where GNI per capita remains a barrier to accessing cutting-edge technologies like AI.

Countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Angola fall into the low and lower-middle-income categories.

In fact, 63% of all countries are considered lower or middle-income (LMIC), some 137 different nations.

That’s a long list and it’s not likely that OpenAI will be targeting them all at once, so it will be interesting to see where it focuses first and why.

Supporting local talent to drive a global impact

Naturally, it’s not just API credits OpenAI is dangling as incentive to apply to the program. Indeed, the company pledges to host incubators and contests as well as “experts for developers and mission-driven organizations leveraging AI.”

The Academy’s focus on building a global network of developers will help foster collaboration and knowledge sharing across diverse regions.

By connecting participants, OpenAI aims to create a robust community that can collectively drive technological advancements and tackle community-specific challenges.

The initiative also plans to host contests and incubators in partnership with philanthropists to provide targeted investment in organizations working on the front lines of their communities.

For example, KOBI, a recent recipient of the OpenAI prize at The Tools Competition, uses AI to assist students with dyslexia in learning to read. Another beneficiary, I-Stem, employs AI to improve access to content for blind and low-vision communities in India, helping them find meaningful employment.

Expanding access to AI resources

In addition to direct support for developers, OpenAI has funded the translation of the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark into 14 languages, including Arabic, Bengali, and Swahili.

This initiative aims to make AI education more accessible and relevant to non-English speaking communities, facilitating the development of AI solutions that are culturally and linguistically tailored to local needs.

The OpenAI Academy represents a significant expansion of OpenAI’s ongoing efforts to empower developers and organizations worldwide.

OpenAI also pledges further details on how to access the Academy’s resources.