A new report by the United Nations Development Program says that unless steps are taken to harness the power of AI to bridge the gap in basic needs and access to such advanced know-how, most of the gains from AI are likely to accrue to rich countries, the Associated Press reported.
The report released Tuesday likens the situation to the “Great Divergence” of the industrial revolution, where many Western countries modernized rapidly while others fell behind.
Given the potential for AI to transform or replace some of the work done by humans with computers and robots, questions about how companies and other institutions use AI are an almost universal concern.
However, while much of the attention paid to AI focuses on productivity, competitiveness, and growth, the authors point out that the more important question is what AI will mean for human life.
“We tend to overemphasize the role of technology,” lead author Michael Muthukrishna of the London School of Economics told reporters. “We need to make sure that technology doesn’t come first, that people come first,” he said in a video address at the report’s launch in Bangkok.
The risk of exclusion is an issue for communities where most people still struggle to access skills, electricity and internet connectivity, for older people, and for people displaced by war, civil war or climate disasters. At the same time, such people may be “invisible” in data that does not take them into account, the report says.
Master’s degree/PR