新一轮大分化：人工智能为何会加剧国家间不平等

Copyright © UNDP 2025United Nations Development ProgrammeOne United Nations Plaza New York, NY 10017, USA All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, inany form or by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission. General disclaimers The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expressionof any opinion whatsoever of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) concerning the legal status ofany country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.Dotted and dashed lines on maps represent approximate border lines for which there may not yet be full agreement. The findings, analysis, and recommendations of this Report do not represent the official position of the UNDP orof any of the UN Member States that are part of its Executive Board. They are also not necessarily endorsed bythose mentioned in the acknowledgments or cited. Some of the figures included in the analytical part of the report where indicated have been estimated by theUNDP or other contributors to the Report and are not necessarily the official statistics of the concerned country,area or territory, which may use alternative methods. All reasonable precautions have been taken to verify theinformation contained in this publication. However, the published material is being distributed without warrantyof any kind, either expressed or implied. The responsibility for the interpretation and use of the material lies with the reader. In no event shall the UNDPbe liable for damages arising from its use. FOREWORD create or destroy. But what we can do is try to guideit along paths that will maximize human development.As this Report points out, developing countries coulduse AI to help transform education, healthcare, andagricultural management – enabling women, men andchildren in the most vulnerable or remote communitiesto be empowered by the best that human and machinelearning have to offer. The goal in our framing isexpansion of people’s capabilities to live the livesthey value and choose. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are alreadypervasive; yet seldom evident. Like electricity or theinternet that underpin them, AIs and their agents arelargely hidden and anonymous, humming away in vastdata centres, supercharging millions of devices andprocesses – and likely to reveal themselves only ifspecifically directed and managed to do so. AI is even less visible to the millions of people onthe other side of the digital divide who lack accessto electricity or to reliable internet or cell phoneconnections. For the world’s poorest communitiesdeprived of many of the most basic services of healthor nutrition or education, AI is not just out of sight butalso out of reach at this time. Any publication from UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Asiaand the Pacific must, however, begin with a caveat: theregion is vast, populous, and extraordinarily diverse –in people and cultures, in natural endowments, andin institutional capacity – making it difficult to come tosweeping region-wide conclusions. This analysis mustspeak to the realities of the smallest Pacific Island statesand remote mountain communities as well as some ofthe world’s most sophisticated megacities, from Delhito Shanghai to Tokyo and Seoul. This Report from the UNDP Regional Bureau for Asiaand the Pacific examines AI from the perspectiveof the vulnerable – looking at its impact on humandevelopment in the region’s developing countries.The Report builds on the landmark UNDP global2025Human Development Report: A Matter of Choicewhichargued that: “As AI moves from a niche technology to acornerstone of people’s lives across multiple domains,its potential to advance human development has tobe seized. That depends on more than algorithms; itdepends on our choices.” Therefore, the Report focuses primarily on many countrydifferences. And at the same time, must also reckon withstark inequalities in digital resources and capabilitieswithin countries – between urban and rural areas,rich and poor, dominant and more vulnerable groups,each at very different points on their digital journeys.In particularly it must address the region’s stark genderdivides. Women are more likely than men to be workingin informal and care economies, and with the introductionof AI could further be exposed to algorithmic bias andonline harm. Unless these imbalances are deliberatelyaddressed so that women are more digitally empowered,these divides are likely to widen and deepen. The Next Great Divergenceexamines those humandevelopment choices from an Asia-Pacific perspectiveand considers the serious risks of AI widening inequality.It points out that from the eighteenth century the IndustrialRevolution and its technological advances fuelled thefirst Great Divergence as Western Europe and NorthAmerica