UN issues stark warning as rapid AI growth may worsen global inequality

On Wednesday, a United Nations independent panel reportedly warned that the development of artificial intelligence may aggravate global inequalities, and proposed a shared framework to cultivate accountability, as adoption of and investment in the technology expedited unevenly across the world.

The panel proposed a collaborative framework to responsibly develop AI as a significant investment in the technology remains unevenly distributed across the world.

The provisional report also serves as a toolkit, providing preliminary advice to the UN member states on ways to harness AI’s capabilities for economic growth across industries while alleviating its dangers.

In line with analysts’ recommendations, the key suggestions include local AI infrastructure such as data centres, enhancing AI capability building, and formulating plans to mitigate misinformation while continuously measuring how AI systems act after release in real-world environments.

The report reads: “The concentration of AI capabilities in a small number of firms and countries could enable authoritarian capture and undermine democratic accountability.”

These recent revelations point to a major shift towards AI systems capable of executing real-world tasks although growth may be capacity-limited and data shortages respectively. Over time, this anticipates self-development in the economy and technological convergence with fields such as quantum computing and biotechnology.

The US and China already dominate in the development of prominent AI models, as well as investments into computing platforms which include the hardware, networking and storage required to deploy powerful models.

The provisional report suggests: “Artificial intelligence leaves most languages behind,” the report notes. While generative AI tools perform well in English and other widely used languages, “most languages are either excluded or have much lower performance”.

The panel underlines countries that are falling behind in AI development and needs to consider significant investments in computing and data infrastructure. However, this capital requires securing a reliable power supply and building data centers.

The report further acknowledges the environmental costs of data centers, comprising their large energy and water consumption, and their potential to release greenhouse gas emissions.

It is crucial to note that some regions lack a stable internet connection while more than 2 billion people remain completely offline, according to the recent figures released by the International Telecommunication Union.

In this connection, the UN Secretary-General said: “The world cannot govern what it cannot understand.”

“The potential is great, but the risks are real, and the cost of waiting is rising, he continued.”