UN Warns AI 'Opportunity Divide' Is Leaving Nations Behind
Is AI building a new digital colonialism that demands redistribution or will the builders' fairness pledges spread the gains?
Above: Deputy Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union Tomas Lamanauskas on March 16, 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan Image credit: Aziz Karimov/Getty Images
The Facts
- Unequal access to artificial intelligence risks leaving developing nations behind, International Telecommunication Union Deputy Secretary-General Tomas Lamanauskas claimed Sunday on the sidelines of the United Nations World Investment Forum in Doha, describing the gap as an "opportunity divide."
- Africa and Latin America together hold just 3.3% of global data center capacity and 2.2 billion people remain offline, Lamanauskas said. Meanwhile, use in sub-Saharan Africa stood at 38% in 2024, compared with 68% globally, ITU figures show.
- Lamanauskas also claimed that approximately 29% of working-age people in developed countries use generative AI, against 16% in developing ones. Lamanauskas placed the cost of closing the digital infrastructure gap at an estimated $2.8 trillion in investment by 2030.
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The Spin
Pro-industry narrative
Shared prosperity sits at the center of AI's future: public wealth funds, portable benefits, worker voice and affordable access to frontier models for schools and small businesses. Across most plausible scenarios growth lifts wages and unemployment stays normal, making the real task spreading the gains, not halting the build.
Industry-critical narrative
AI is further entrenching an era of digital colonialism, with audits and fairness pledges unable fix a system where households pay higher power bills to feed data centers as billionaires get richer. Public compute, community-governed data and real redistribution are the fixes that actually shift power.
