As artificial intelligence reshapes the global economy, concerns are growing over how the Global South risks being sidelined in this technological revolution. While AI is often marketed as democratized, access to research, funding, and infrastructure remains skewed. For instance, NeurIPS, one of the foremost AI conferences, is often inaccessible to African scholars due to visa barriers. These barriers effectively keep many Global South nations excluded from key AI discussions. Also, AI’s benefits largely flow to industrialized nations, which have an abundance of computational power and energy, with lower-paid data labor sourced from the Global South. This echoes past exploitative trade patterns from the colonial era. If Global South countries do not want to be left behind, they must unite, assert control of their data, and build their own markets.
The Guardian
