https://arab.news/gvjxn
During a recent trip to Kazakhstan, I was struck by people’s enthusiasm for artificial intelligence. Virtually everyone I encountered — including academics, policymakers and entrepreneurs — seemed convinced that the technology will help solve thorny challenges, from diversifying the economy away from dependence on natural resources to expanding access to critical services, particularly for remote populations. I had expected the diffusion of knowledge about AI to be slower, but perhaps their positivity should not have surprised me. After all, the rapid development of AI implies important opportunities for emerging economies.
As the latest UN Human Development Report showed, emerging-economy populations are not only well aware of these opportunities but are also more optimistic about the technology than their developed-economy counterparts. In advanced economies, conversations about AI tend to turn immediately to fears of excessive automation, job losses and labor market disruption. Emerging-economy populations also worry that AI will bring a wave of automation, but they anticipate even more augmentation and human-machine collaboration.
One might be tempted to highlight the risk of an “AI digital divide,” with high-income countries benefiting disproportionately from the technology and low- and middle-income countries falling further behind. But such concerns focus on one dimension of the AI revolution: the development of an expanding set of powerful tools to be deployed, say, to advance scientific discovery, increase productivity, generate new products and services or automate (via agents) complex tasks that involve planning, sequencing and integration of steps. Since few countries can fulfill the associated requirements regarding scale, investment and infrastructure, such activities are currently taking place largely in the US and China.
