Artificial Intelligence and the Intensification of Global Inequality

Strategic Council Online – Opinion: Although other revolutions have occurred between the Industrial Revolution and the artificial intelligence revolution, especially the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) revolution, and humanity has made remarkable progress along this path, in terms of fundamental transformations in the mode of production and social relations, it can be said that the transformations of artificial intelligence and the scope of its effects are perhaps similar to the Industrial Revolution but on a much larger scale. It is, in fact, a new revolution, much more profound and complex than the Industrial Revolution.

Reza Majidzadeh – Development Expert

However, an important point is that in this new revolution, fewer countries can benefit from the byproducts, the dissemination of technical knowledge, the dissemination of new production methods, and the byproducts of this new revolution, unlike during the Industrial Revolution. A recent United Nations report also shows that the pace of AI competition far exceeds countries’ capacities, and inequality is intensifying worldwide. Before this report and before the global discussion of AI, other reports indicated that the world’s entry into the age of the knowledge economy itself would deepen inequality gaps. Even earlier, in explaining the consequences of the network economy and the economy resulting from ICT transformations, Manuel Castells showed that we are entering an era where the geometry of access is changing, and the flow of resources and countries’ access to resources will also undergo serious transformations. Therefore, many countries may be left out of these accesses and suffer from a kind of technological loneliness that keeps them behind the gates of progress. Consequently, new waves are emerging, and the intervals between them are shortening to the extent that today, technological changes and transformations have reached periods of less than a year. At one time, perhaps 20 or 25 years were needed for a profound technological transformation to occur; later, it gradually reduced to a decade, and now, in the age of artificial intelligence, it can almost be said to have reached a month. Something like the invention of the COVID-19 vaccine also demonstrated this, but the question is, who or which group provides the funding for innovation to happen there? However, the issue of inequality arising from these profound transformations and the AI revolution is not something to be easily overlooked. After all, this inequality has several deep and important dimensions, one of which is the AI infrastructure dimension. The AI currently available to everyone and used in applications is not the AI with deep learning and thinking capabilities capable of performing tasks that replace humans entirely. In reality, this superior AI technology is not accessible to everyone. The general public, so to speak, experiences a mock-up of AI that is available to everyone for free. The aim is for feedback to go towards understanding in which areas humanity wants to use AI; in which areas they want to focus on it, and how effective the answers it provides can be.

The important point here is that when real AI, the AI that creates productive power and the power to guide key technological processes in the world, is only in the hands of a few countries with suitable infrastructure, then inequality manifests itself more seriously. It becomes clear what applications real AI will have. So, one dimension is the infrastructure related to AI, computational power, and processing capabilities, and another dimension is the human capital capable of working with AI. Therefore, human capital is significant and is cultivated only in a few countries. The next issue is technological competition in other technologies that AI intensifies, such as electric vehicles and other future-related developments like the space economy and space travel. Each of these means that countries with access to these technologies can possess power and even solve fundamental problems of developing countries, such as water issues or air pollution, with them.

In this case, the bargaining power of some countries is very weak, meaning they have to make significant concessions to address these obvious, basic problems, and the gap is huge.

This indicates that this inequality affects the direction in which countries design their knowledge processes and can even influence countries’ power and jeopardize their security. To bridge this gap and address backwardness, it is necessary to update infrastructure, build human networks with emigrated talent, and prioritize technological choices so that the issue of interacting with the world can be gradually resolved.