Report warns of potential ‘great divergence’, with developed states profiting and others left behind.

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.

It warns of the potential for “divergence” between rich and poor states as the impacts of the technology take hold, reversing the effect of decades of declining global inequality.

“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.

Asia Pacific at centre of shift

The report focuses on the challenges and opportunities in the Asia Pacific region, but its authors said the recommendations should resonate globally.

The region, home to more than 55 percent of the world’s population, sits at the centre of the technological shift, the report said, accounting for more than half of global AI users.

The technology, it said, is already bringing benefits such as improving tutoring in remote schools, speeding up disease detection, expanding credit access for small businesses, and strengthening disaster response.

It could raise annual GDP growth by about 2 percentage points in the region, with ASEAN economies standing to gain nearly $1tn in additional GDP over the next decade, the report forecast.

However, AI technology also has the potential to deliver benefits unequally, entrenching the gap between the haves and have-nots.

While early dividends are flowing to advanced economies such as Singapore, Japan and China, nations with weak connectivity, unreliable power and limited technology skills are missing out.

Meanwhile, millions of jobs, particularly those held by women and young people, face high exposure to automation without policy intervention.

“No-one can predict with certainty where AI will take us in the future, nor can we fully imagine what it might help create or destroy,” reads the report.

“Ultimately, it should not be machines but the world’s people who choose which technologies to prioritize and how best to exploit them,” the UNDP adds.