Artificial intelligence today affects everything from business and personal technologies to how we relate to work, culture and knowledge. No wonder there is immense interest among policy makers about the third AI Action Summit in Paris co-chaired by Emmanuel Macron and Narendra Modi that has brought together leaders in technology, business, politics and academia from more than 100 countries. Unlike the earlier editions that focused on safety commitments, this gathering promises to be more about sharing AI’s benefits with developing countries. That’s why India must use its role as co-chair to highlight the Global South’s concerns.
As each of the previous three industrial revolutions gathered pace, questions were raised about sharing the wealth they generated and the technologies that enabled them. We must ask such questions of the fourth industrial revolution, too, as the AI race increasingly reflects the current era’s geopolitical chasm—between the West and China. It’s in this context that Chinese company DeepSeek’s cheaper model should be seen crashing the entry barriers of capital and resources raised by Western Big Tech.
A recent report—authored by experts from over 30 countries including India—informs several talking points at the ongoing summit. On AI’s impact on jobs, the experts disagree only on the timing of the expected cull. The effect of AI-induced lay-offs would be very different in the labour-starved advanced economies of the US and Europe than in populous countries like India and Nigeria, where social security is patchy at best. Even China, with a manufacturing-powered economy about five times the size of India’s, can absorb more workers in sectors other than hi-tech ones. Ominously, the experts agree that AI can upset the current strategic balance by enabling new weapons and efficiently deploying older ones.
The AI race is the biggest disruption since the rise of the internet and mobile telephony. But unlike the late 1990s, access to this era’s disruptive technology is far more restricted at present. We cannot expect companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta—who together plan to invest around $200 billion on AI this year—to be swayed by the Global South’s imperatives. That is where political leaders come in. This summit could be seen later as a defining moment when we caught the bus to a more equitable future, or missed it.
