CDT and Cornell Urge Investment in Linguistic Diversity at UN AI Governance Dialogue

The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), a Washington nonprofit, and Cornell’s Global AI Initiative jointly submitted comments to the United Nations’ first Global Dialogue on AI Governance ahead of its opening session. The submission, authored in part by Aditya Vashistha of Cornell, argues that current AI systems leave many languages underrepresented and calls for targeted investment and technical work.

The joint comments outline a need for more research, funding, and governance focus on linguistic diversity so that AI tools are equitable across languages and communities. CDT and Cornell warned that models trained primarily on high-resource languages can disadvantage speakers of low- and mid-resource languages, deepening existing digital divides.

The Center

The filing frames linguistic diversity as both a technical shortcoming and a governance priority, recommending that international AI policy discussions include concrete commitments to data collection, evaluation benchmarks, capacity building, and funding streams that support underrepresented languages. The submission positions the UN dialogue as a venue to convert high-level principles into actionable support for multilingualism in AI.

CDT’s participation highlights how Washington-based advocacy groups are shaping global AI policy debates, while the Cornell partnership brings academic research into the policy mix. The joint comments aim to push the UN process toward commitments that benefit language communities often overlooked in AI development.