AI holds tantalising promise for the emerging world

New technology brings with it both the sweet hope of greater prosperity and the cruel fear of missing out. Satya Nadella, the boss of Microsoft, says he is haunted by the fact that the Industrial Revolution left behind India, his country of birth. (Indian manufacturers hardly enjoyed a level playing-field—Britain was then both their rival and their ruler.) Many technologies, such as online-education courses, have generated more hype than economic growth in the emerging world. Some people worry that generative artificial intelligence (ai), too, will disappoint the global south. The big winners so far seem to be a bunch of Western early adopters, as well as startups in San Francisco and America’s “magnificent seven” tech firms, which include Microsoft and have together added an astonishing $4.6trn to their market value since Chatgpt’s launch in November 2022.