AI Can Speak to the World. But Is It Listening?
Leadership Analysis by Rich “Trigger” Bontrager, America’s Leadership Broadcaster™
Bill Gates is asking an important question about artificial intelligence: Will it make opportunity more widely available, or deepen the gaps that already exist?
In the 2026 Goalkeepers report, Gates points to a problem that caught my attention as a broadcaster. AI tools may be getting better at producing answers, but they do not serve people equally well in every language or every setting. The report says a leading speech recognition system makes errors less than 6% of the time in English and more than 60% of the time in Yoruba.
If a system cannot hear you accurately, how can you trust it to speak for you?
That question reaches well beyond AI. It belongs in every boardroom, every team meeting, and every leadership conversation.
I’ve spent nearly four decades working with microphones and cameras. I also know what it feels like to have a voice that does not always come out the way someone expects it to. As a lifelong stutterer, I learned early that being heard and being understood are two different things.
That is why the numbers in Gates’s report matter to me. They represent people trying to ask a question, solve a problem, or explain a need in their own words. A tool can be astonishingly capable in a demonstration and still fail someone when they need it.
Gates argues that AI needs to work across languages, reflect local realities, and enable communities to shape its use. I agree with that direction. His report also describes a farmer in India receiving advice about a diseased crop in her own language—an example of technology helping someone act when time matters.
But I want to push the leadership question further.
Understanding someone’s language is only the beginning. Who gets to decide what happens after the system understands them?
An organization might translate its messages into ten languages and still never ask those communities what they really need. A company might use AI to summarize employee concerns and never give employees a meaningful chance to challenge the summary. A leader might call that inclusion because more people received the message.
I would call it distribution. But in my mind, meaningful connection asks more of us.
Gates himself raises the need for local data and local leadership. That principle should have teeth. People affected by an AI system should have a voice in its design, a clear way to report when it fails, and a human being accountable for consequential decisions. Leaders should be able to say what changed because those people spoke up.
This is where Lead Through The Lens™ becomes practical. A lens determines who is in the frame, and is seen and heard. Leaders make that choice every time they prepare a message, launch a tool, or announce a change.
So before your next AI rollout—or your next important communication—ask:
Who did we listen to before we built this?
Whose language, experience, or concern might we be misunderstanding?
How can they correct us, and who is responsible for responding?
Those questions are part of Human Connection, the first principle of my H.E.A.R.T. Method™. They are also how leaders begin to earn trust through the lens.
I am encouraged by the ambition to make AI useful to more people. I challenge leaders, including those building the technology, to measure more than access and adoption. Measure whether people can question the tool. Measure whether their feedback changes it. Measure whether they know when a person will step in.
Technology amplifies communication.
But it’s humanity that creates real, authentic connections.
A message can reach the whole world and still miss the person standing right in front of us. Our responsibility as leaders is to notice, listen, and respond.
Where have you seen a leader or organization broaden its reach without truly listening—and what would have helped people feel heard?
Learn more about my leadership communication work at RichBontrager.net.
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