“AI has thrown developing economies a lifeline, and they should seize it,” Indermit Gill, chief economist of the World Bank Group, said as the organisation launched its annual World Development Report.
“They do not need large models or big data centres to reap its benefits,” he added, advocating for the adaptation of lower-cost AI tools to local conditions to deliver results in the health, education, justice and agricultural sectors.
Advanced AI models offer the ability to quickly analyse data and automate many tasks that otherwise take skilled humans longer to do.
These AI models, however, require huge data centres and large amounts of complex computing power, using massive amounts of electricity and water – with implications for climate change.
“Developing economies today are in the midst of their weakest average growth performance in three decades,” said a World Bank statement accompanying the report.
“AI could significantly boost that performance before the end of the 2020s while delivering tangible benefits to people.”
The report calls for countries to use AI to “help extend otherwise costly medical, legal, educational, and agricultural services to underserved billions – doing in a decade what might otherwise take a century”.
Lower-income countries have struggled through the 2020s, hit by a series of successive shocks that saw the World Bank earlier this year dub it a “lost decade” for their economic growth.
The bank has lowered its 2026 global growth forecast to its lowest level since the pandemic, with the economic fallout of the Iran war battering countries around the world.
The Bank’s new report advocates for developing countries to start working with localised AI tools and solutions now, and to invest in electricity generation and distribution; expand access to computing power; and improve the availability of local data.
“The window to get this right is narrow,” said Gaurav Nayyar, director of the report.
“AI presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to solve problems that have resisted solutions for generations,” he added. (AFP)
