AI threatens to widen inequality among states: UN

Artificial intelligence risks increasing inequality between developed and developing countries, a United Nations report has warned. The report, titled "The Next Great Divergence" and released by the United Nations Development Programme's Asia and Pacific regional bureau on Tuesday, calls for urgent, coordinated policy action to manage the impact of the technology. "We think that AI is heralding a new era of rising inequality between countries, following years of convergence in the last 50 years," Philip Schellekens, the bureau's chief economist, told a briefing in Geneva, according to the Reuters news agency. The report argues that AI, like the Industrial Revolution before it, has the potential to unlock unprecedented opportunities or deepen existing divides, across a global landscape marked by vast gaps in wealth, skills, and digital access. Even wealthier countries would suffer if poorer states were left behind by the AI revolution, said Schellekens. "If inequality continues to rise, the spillover effects of that in terms of the security agenda, in terms of undocumented forms of migration, will also become more daunting," he worries.