Artificial intelligence (AI) usage in North America, Europe, and other regions of the so-called Global North is currently twice as high as in Global South countries, which risk missing out on “the biggest opportunity of the 21st century,” Microsoft has warned.
Microsoft said it is on pace to invest $50 billion by the end of the decade to help bring AI to countries across the Global South, announcing the plan at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on February 18th.
The Global South refers to developing, emerging, or lower-income countries, mostly in the southern hemisphere, as opposed to wealthier, more industrialized nations of the Global North.
Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, and Natasha Crampton, vice president and chief responsible AI officer, called on the world to “act with urgency” so that the benefits of the technology are shared more equally across the globe.
“For more than a century, unequal access to electricity exacerbated a growing economic gap between the Global North and South. Unless we act with urgency, a growing AI divide will perpetuate this disparity in the century ahead,” they said in a blog post.
Microsoft said its five-point plan to close the AI divide includes infrastructure and education projects, as well as supporting local innovations.
The company has already invested billions in AI across the Global South, including data centers in Mexico and in some African countries. In India alone, Microsoft unveiled $17.5 billion in AI investments last year.
Microsoft’s latest AI Diffusion Report found that the rate of AI adoption across the globe is faster than the internet, the PC, and even the smartphone, with more than 1.2 billion people having used AI over the past three years.
However, similar to other general-purpose technologies before, it found that its benefits are not spread evenly, with AI use in the Global North roughly double that in the Global South – and set to widen further.
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“If AI is deployed broadly and used well by a young and growing population, it offers a real prospect for catch-up economic growth for the Global South. It might even provide the biggest such opportunity of the 21st century,” Microsoft executives said.
India, one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets, could serve as a roadmap for many lower-income countries and is increasingly a magnet for US tech companies, including Anthropic, which announced a partnership with Indian IT giant Infosys earlier this week.
Separately, chipmaker Nvidia announced it is expanding its partnerships in India, where it will work with several venture capital firms, including Peak XV and Z47, to fund AI startups in the country. More than 4,000 Indian firms have already joined Nvidia's global startup program.
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