UN report warns AI could deepen global inequality

A new United Nations report has warned that the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) could widen global inequality unless countries work together to establish shared standards for its responsible development and use.

The report, prepared by the UN's independent international scientific panel on AI, outlines both the opportunities and risks posed by the technology as investment and adoption continue to accelerate unevenly around the world, The Guardian writes.

The panel cautions that simply providing access to AI tools is not enough to ensure equal benefits.

"Access to AI tools alone does not produce equal benefit," the report states. "Countries that rely on foreign models, cloud infrastructure and data pipelines may gain access to AI while losing practical control over its standards, safeguards and local fit."

Established by the UN General Assembly last year as the world's first global scientific body on AI, the panel examined the technology's potential to transform sectors such as agriculture and education while warning that it could also be exploited for fraud, election interference and other malicious activities.

The report recommends that governments invest in domestic AI infrastructure, including data centres, improve AI education and workforce training, support local developers, establish AI safety institutes, strengthen efforts to combat disinformation and continuously monitor AI systems after deployment.

Although more than one billion people now use AI every week, the report says adoption remains highly uneven, with countries in the Global South significantly lagging behind those in the Global North. It notes that the United States and China dominate both the development of advanced AI models and investment in the computing infrastructure needed to operate them.

The panel warns that this concentration of technological power could have broader political consequences.

"The concentration of AI capabilities in a small number of firms and countries could enable authoritarian capture and undermine democratic accountability," the report states.

To narrow the gap, the experts recommend greater investment in computing capacity and data infrastructure. However, they also acknowledge that expanding AI infrastructure comes with environmental costs, including high energy and water consumption and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

The report further highlights the lack of expertise needed to oversee increasingly powerful AI systems.

"Most countries, including many advanced economies, lack the technical expertise to assess the most capable 'frontier' models or to participate meaningfully in their governance," the authors write.

Language barriers are identified as another major challenge. While generative AI performs well in English and other widely spoken languages, the report says most of the world's languages receive limited support, reducing the technology's usefulness for large populations.

The panel cites examples of potentially dangerous medical translation errors, including an AI system translating the Tigrinya language by confusing smallpox with syphilis, gonorrhoea with diabetes, and the phrase "you have been given intravenous antibiotics" as "you have been given intravenous insecticides."

"These mistranslations can be life-threatening," the report notes.

The report also points out that more than two billion people—nearly one-third of the world's population—remain without internet access, limiting their ability to benefit from AI technologies.

Describing its work as "the first of its kind," the panel said the United Nations is uniquely positioned to address the cross-border challenges posed by AI and stressed that its recommendations are based on scientific analysis rather than political considerations.

By Sabina Mammadli