AI is transforming our future – but who will benefit?

By Tomas Lamanauskas, Deputy Secretary-General, ITU

We are witnessing one of the most profound technological transformations of our time.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already changing what is possible: helping doctors detect diseases earlier, farmers improve yields, businesses reach new markets and industries become more productive.

Close to 20 per of the world’s working-age population is already using generative AI – and we are only beginning to discover what an AI-powered world can achieve.

Yet this extraordinary opportunity comes with growing anxiety.

Can we trust what we see online? Will AI replace our jobs? Will we retain control over technologies increasingly shaping our lives?

And for billions of people, there is another, possibly even more fundamental question: will they be able to participate at all?

Today, about 2.2 billion people remain offline. At the same time, advanced AI computing capacity is concentrated in only a handful of economies. Around 90 per cent of known AI supercomputer processing happens in just two countries. Latin America and Africa together account for only 3.3 per cent of data centre capacity.

As AI accelerates, we face a real risk that today’s digital divide becomes tomorrow’s AI divide.

Investment will shape the AI economy

Investment is already moving at extraordinary speed.

According to the latest World Investment Report from UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), strategic sectors including AI infrastructure and technologies comprised 44 per cent of global greenfield investment value in 2025, up from just 16 per cent in 2020. Announced investment project values for data centres alone increased by USD 235 billion in 2025.

Yet low- and lower-middle-income economies attracted only around 10 per cent of strategic-sector greenfield investment between 2020 and 2025.

The question is therefore where we invest, what we invest in, and who ultimately benefits. And the answer must go beyond building ever more powerful AI systems.

First, we need infrastructure that makes AI accessible to all.

Connecting everyone meaningfully by 2030 will require around USD 1.6 trillion in physical infrastructure investment, rising to as much as USD 2.8 trillion when affordability, skills and policies are included.

We need reliable networks, access to computing capacity and sustainable energy systems. Data-centre electricity demand alone is expected to roughly double by 2030.

Moreover, as our dependence on digital systems grows, so does the need for resilience. We need resilience by design, not by disaster.

Second, we need to invest in people as seriously as we invest in technology.

By 2030, the World Economic Forum notes, nearly 40 per cent of workers’ core skills are expected to change. But according to UNCTAD, fewer than one-third of developing economies had AI education or training strategies in place in 2025.

Access to powerful AI tools means little if businesses and workers cannot use them productively.

Third, we need trust and common technical foundations.

Without common rules, markets fragment, risks grow, and trust erodes.

The number of countries with a national AI strategy or policy has risen from just four 10 years ago to 104 this year. Yet AI is advancing faster than many countries can establish the frameworks to govern it.

This is why collaboratively developed international standards matter. International standards enable technologies to work together, reduce costs and help innovation scale across borders.

They also help make AI systems safer, more reliable and accessible, particularly for smaller businesses.

Stepping up ambition to action

At the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), we bring together 194 Member States and more than 1,000 members from industry, academia and civil society to advance precisely this cooperation. As the United Nations agency for digital technologies, we work to ensure that the infrastructure, skills and international standards needed for digital transformation are available to everyone.

Through our AI for Good Global Summit, which brought together more than 12,000 participants from 177 countries this year, and the UN’s inaugural UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance, supported jointly by ITU and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), we have been connecting governments, industry, researchers and innovators to advance practical solutions and build trust.

Furthermore, we are translating cooperation into investment.

Together with UNCTAD and eight multilateral development banks, we launched the Digital Infrastructure Investment Catalyser, bringing together over 100 organizations to help turn digital infrastructure needs into investable projects.

Through our forthcoming Digital and AI Infrastructure Investment Playbook, we are developing practical tools to assess infrastructure and computing needs, identify financing gaps and build stronger investment pipelines.

At the World Bank’s recent Global Digital Summit, we examined concrete project opportunities in Bangladesh and Pakistan to help move from planning towards investment.

This is the kind of cooperation we need: connecting national ambitions with technical expertise, financing and practical implementation.

We also help countries address the skills gap. Through the ITU Academy, we reached 83,000 learners last year. Our AI Skills Coalition, bringing together over 80 partners, is helping expand access to the skills needed for this new economy.

In parallel, we build technical foundations for the AI-powered world. ITU has nearly 500 AI-related standards published or under development. The International AI Standards Exchange database – an initiative of the World Standards Cooperation, bringing ITU together with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) – features nearly 1000 AI standards from global standards development bodies.

A shared responsibility

Together with our partners, we continue exploring investment across the AI ecosystem – from infrastructure and computing capacity to foundation models, AI agents, applications and skills.

Looking ahead, three questions are crucial:

• How can developing economies capture more value from the AI revolution?
• How can we turn investment needs into viable projects and partnerships?
• How do we ensure AI investment creates jobs, strengthens businesses and improves people’s lives?

Governments, development banks, industry and international organizations all have a role to play. No single country or organization can deliver this transformation alone.

Ultimately, the success of the AI economy should be measured by more than the power of our models, the number of data centres we build, or the billions we invest. Let’s measure it by whether a small business can compete, a farmer can prosper, a hospital can deliver better care, and every country has the chance to innovate.

The future of AI is being shaped by the investment decisions we make today. Let’s make sure those decisions create opportunities for everyone.

Based on remarks by Tomas Lamanauskas at the World Investment Forum 2026, where ITU and UNCTAD co-chaired the “Investing in AI” track.

Header image credit: Adobe Stock