OpinionAI can be a great leveller for the Global South. Just look at Bangladesh

From healthcare to education and rural inclusion, AI has allowed Bangladesh to make developmental leapfrogs through frugal innovation

But for these innovations to be magnified and replicated, the marginalised Global South must have a seat at the table

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A Bangladeshi labourer unloads watermelons from a boat on the Buriganga River in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on April 3. In today’s online world, digital literacy equates to power - the power to run businesses, send money abroad and receive public services. Yet developing digital literacy skills, especially for those in rural areas, can be difficult. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 8:30pm, 22 Apr 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) has long attracted an air of mystique. Depending on where you stand, it will either enrich us or kill us. Yet, rather than indulging in science fiction, we have to understand how AI affects the here and now.

If managed without caution, the rise of AI could be an unprecedented driver of inequality. But if managed correctly, it could prove to be one of the great social levellers. It could allow many in the developing world to leapfrog traditional developmental stages to become truly global, digitally enabled citizens in their own right.

AI is predicted to add US$15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. To ensure this benefit extends beyond the United States and China primarily, we have to make sure that more voices from the Global South are present.

So how could AI drive inequality? Historically, when technologies are distributed unevenly, exploitation and even domination can ensue. The entangled rise of gunpowder and colonialism might be one such example. As author Yuval Harari asked in an interview last May, “Will the rest of the world just become algorithmic data colonies for AI-dominating countries?” One might see the Cambridge Analytica debacle as evidence of Yuval’s fear.

This may be the doomsday fear. While this technology poses risks, we mustn’t ignore the opportunities it presents too. AI can be a transformative tool for wealth creation and public service delivery in the developing world.

Many have compared the discovery of AI to Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. Just as fire can be used for cooking or arson, depending on whose hands it ends up in, so AI remains as “good” or as “bad” as the people who use it.