- Ensuring Global South is on the AI boom Countries other than today’s AI hotspots need to pool resources, each offering some of the recipes that include computing power, investment and people.
Artificial intelligence offers immeasurable opportunities, but it is expensive to build and requires a highly resource-intensive data center to run.
Unless governments, businesses and international organizations work together to include the so-called Global South in AI development, the need for this resource threatens to repeat the connectivity deficit between wealthy countries and other countries. Digital Cooperative Organization.
“We have 2.6 billion people today. We don’t even have connections. They don’t even have devices, they’re off the grid. Alyahya told Riyadh at The Fortune Most Pofffent Women Summit. “Last year alone, there was a $300 billion investment in AI. But how many countries are investing and a few are innovating. That means there’s a large part of the world where there’s no access to such technology.”
Founded in 2020 with five members from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Pakistan, DCO aims to narrow down digital disparities and promote prosperity and opportunity for all countries. It is currently focusing on drafting a new AI treaty.
The key to narrowing down AI splits before they become a trench is to speak to MPW events, dispersing computing power across the state and developing a shared talent pool across the country.
“We believe that every country has a competitive advantage,” Aliyahiya said that while member countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar have resources to invest in computing power, some are suited to deliver talent, local content and innovation.
As an example of such coordinated research between the Global South, Aliyahiya points to the AI Healthcare initiative, which portrays local computing to build a company that can acquire and scale local computing power, one from Nigeria, one from Pakistan, one from Morocco, one from Jordan, three from Saudi Arabia, one from Nigeria.
“We will create new frameworks for intellectual property and also share local content across countries,” she said.
DCO currently has 16 members, covering a population of 800 million.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.
