At the ninth World Investment Forum in Qatar, Tomas Lamanauskas, a senior UN official, told Al Jazeera that gaps in access to AI tools and the infrastructure behind them could increase global inequality. Al Jazeera published the report Oct. 25.
The World Bank’s guidance on AI readiness in developing economies identifies dependable electricity and internet, locally relevant data, workforce skills and strong institutions as foundations for adoption. Its recommendations address readiness as a matter of infrastructure and institutional capacity as well as access to software.
The Bank recommends putting existing AI tools to work and adapting them to local needs as countries build capacity. Frontier model development has a higher resource bar: the report names world-class researchers, large data centers, chips and extensive training data among the requirements. The Bank says most developing countries cannot reasonably pursue that level of development in the near term.
