Why AI That Understands Culture Is A Global Win

InnovationWhy AI That Understands Culture Is A Global WinByRyan Kolln,Forbes Councils Member.for Forbes Technology CouncilCOUNCIL POSTExpertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based)May 26, 2026, 06:00am EDTRyan Kolln, CEO and Managing Director of Appen. gettyAI has impacted the entire globe, but research shows that even the most advanced multilingual systems continue to fall short. What they’re missing is nuance, or the cultural cues within language that convey meaning beyond words. This becomes more apparent as governments and enterprises adopt multilingual AI at scale, increasingly raising the stakes. AI that misunderstands culture can unintentionally distort meaning, alienate users and even cause harm in extreme cases. Cultural understanding shouldn’t be considered an add-on or a bonus feature in AI. It’s an absolute must if we want AI that’s more trustworthy, safer and more effective in the real world. Why Does Cultural Intelligence Matter In AI? Language is often a reflection of the culture that shapes it, impacting tone, idioms, dialects and even silence across regions. Not surprisingly, AI systems trained on narrow or homogeneous data often miss these subtleties and interpret language more literally without the right context. This is not theoretical. Even something as basic as language translation tools can cause serious harm, as it did in 2017 when a Palestinian man was arrested after Facebook’s translation system changed “good morning” to “attack them” in Hebrew and “hurt them” in English. Not all examples are this extreme, but literal translation without context can produce wildly inaccurate meaning. This is a significant issue, with studies suggesting that nearly half (47%) of contextual meaning may be lost through conventional machine translation, especially when systems have low regional variety. In areas like healthcare or public safety, which can deal with actual life...