Will AI Perpetuate Bias or Equity in Philanthropy?

Next week, at my University of Chicago guest lecture, students will debate whether AI will perpetuate bias or equity in the social sector and philanthropy.
That got me thinking.

🟰 Equity lens
Foundations and grants management systems are increasingly using AI to screen applications, which helps foundations keep their grant cycles open (as opposed to invite-only).

And AI is helping smaller nonprofits apply for more grants. Given that they use it responsibly (read: not AI slop!), they can compete with larger orgs.

❌ Bias lens
We know that AI tools are trained on biased data, so using AI to screen applications introduces a level of bias that we can't see or eliminate completely.

So, the same AI that is keeping foundations' grant cycles open to any organization, is the same AI that can disqualify an organization because of biased training data.

There's no straightforward answer here, and that's the AI paradigm we find ourselves in.

What do you think?