United Nations: World leaders have warned that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and control over data could create a new form of global domination, leaving developing countries dependent on technologies and rules designed elsewhere.
Speakers from Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and the Indian and Pacific oceans welcomed AI’s potential. But they demanded a voice in global regulation, fair access to technology and protection for national languages, cultures and data.
Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis offered the sharpest description of the danger.
“This is colonisation by data. It does not arrive with ships and flags,” Davis told the UN General Assembly (UNGA).
He said data had become the newest raw material in the global economy. Digital platforms, he argued, could take information from developing societies and return versions of their identities shaped elsewhere.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman said existing technological inequality must not be allowed to spread into the next generation of digital systems.
“We do not want today’s digital divide to become tomorrow’s artificial intelligence divide,” Rahman said.
Bangladesh called for technology transfer, skills development and affordable access to modern technologies. It also urged the United Nations to adopt an effective policy framework so countries could benefit from the rapid expansion of AI and social media.
The Maldives made a similar appeal for inclusive rule-making.
“Every country must have a voice in shaping the global rules for AI,” Vice-President Hussain Mohamed Latheef said.
He said AI could help small states overcome distance and scale, and improve health care, education and public services. But the digital future, he added, should not create new forms of dependence.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama focused on manipulation, accountability and the use of AI by hostile actors.
“The greatest danger is that it will obey the wrong human beings perfectly,” Rama said.
He said no machine held democratic legitimacy and no algorithm inherited constitutional responsibility. AI, he warned, could multiply a falsehood at enormous speed and bury the truth without formally censoring it.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung described the AI revolution as both an opportunity and a crisis. Without preparation, he said, it could deepen inequality rather than spread prosperity.
Saint Lucia warned that digital technology could create a hierarchy in which a small number of corporations and powerful states controlled systems used by everyone else.
“The digital future must not be owned by a few. It must be governed for the benefit of all,” Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre said.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the source of global influence was changing.
“Today, power increasingly comes from data, computing capacity and algorithms. This new power is highly concentrated,” he said.
Guterres called for information-sharing on emerging safety risks, common safeguards and a multilateral AI risk-management framework backed by independent oversight. He said every country should have a role through the United Nations.
Tonga said it did not have to lead every technological race, but would help shape the rules governing new systems. It called for control over national data and warned that Pacific data, biodiversity and traditional knowledge must not fuel technological advances while returning little value to island communities.
Guyana framed the issue as a test of whether innovation would improve ordinary lives.
“Technology must not become the privilege of the few; it must become the servant of all humanity,” President Irfaan Ali said.
India has a large information-technology industry, a rapidly expanding digital economy and one of the world’s biggest populations of technology users. New Delhi has also promoted its digital public infrastructure model as a way to widen access to public services across the Global South.
IANS
