The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that the artificial intelligence boom, while driving significant economic growth, is widening the gap between those who benefit from the technology and those left behind. Kristalina Georgieva called for urgent policy changes to ensure the gains from AI are shared more broadly across societies.
Speaking at a conference this week, Georgieva noted that AI adoption is heavily concentrated in advanced economies, with the US and China accounting for the majority of investment and deployment. Developing nations, she warned, risk falling further behind as the technology reshapes labor markets and productivity.
The IMF chief highlighted three key areas of concern: the concentration of AI infrastructure in a handful of countries, the displacement of workers in routine and middle-skill jobs, and the growing divide in access to AI education and tools. She urged governments to invest in digital infrastructure, retraining programs, and social safety nets.
Georgieva's comments come as the AI industry continues to consolidate around a small number of frontier labs and cloud providers. The concentration of compute resources and talent in the US and China has raised concerns about a new form of digital colonialism, where developing nations provide data and labor but capture little of the economic value.
