We need to act with urgency to address the growing AI divide

Artificial intelligence is diffusing at an impressive speed, but its adoption around the world remains profoundly uneven. As Microsoft’s latest AI Diffusion Report shows, AI usage in the Global North is roughly twice that of the Global South. And this divide continues to widen. This disparity impacts not only national and regional economic growth, but whether AI can deliver on its broader promise of expanding opportunity and prosperity around the world. The India AI Impact Summit rightly has placed this challenge at the center of its agenda. For more than a century, unequal access to electricity exacerbated a growing economic gap between the Global North and South. Unless we act with urgency, a growing AI divide will perpetuate this disparity in the century ahead. Solutions will not come easily. The needs are multifaceted and will require substantial investments and hard work by governments, the private sector, and nonprofit organizations. But the opportunity is clear. If AI is deployed broadly and used well by a young, growing population, it offers a real prospect for catch-up economic growth in the Global South. It might even provide the biggest such opportunity of the 21^st century.