Artificial intelligence will create a widening gap between developed and underdeveloped countries in several fields that constitute the very core of civilizational power, namely: the economy, knowledge, sovereignty, and the human being. This has been affirmed by recent reports issued by authoritative international institutions.
So, what are the most critical domains in which this gap will widen, based on reliable references?
In the economic sphere, developed countries will rely on artificial intelligence to increase productivity, reduce costs, and control global value chains, while underdeveloped countries will remain mere consumers of technology rather than producers of it—dependent on foreign platforms and deprived of economic sovereignty. This gap will enable the transfer of wealth from human labor to technological capital, which is owned and monopolized by a small number of countries.
In the labor market and skills sector, artificial intelligence will generate highly skilled, high-efficiency jobs in developed countries, while leading to the destruction of traditional jobs in underdeveloped countries, which suffer from the absence of reskilling and retraining programs. This will result in the aggravation of structural unemployment.
In education and knowledge, the gap between advanced and underdeveloped countries will expand further. The former will adopt artificial intelligence in adaptive learning and advance algorithmic scientific research, thereby enabling them to produce knowledge and control its standards. Underdeveloped countries, by contrast, will rely on ready-made tools; over time, critical thinking skills will weaken, and their universities will turn into spaces for consuming knowledge rather than producing it.
**In medicine**, artificial intelligence will bring about a radical transformation in early diagnosis, predictive medicine, and epidemic management. Conversely, poor and underdeveloped countries will lag behind in responding to health crises and will be forced to import costly solutions without owning or controlling the underlying technology.
The most dangerous field, because it directly affects state sovereignty and security, is defense and security. Artificial intelligence will be employed militarily in surveillance and control systems and will fuel cyber warfare, while underdeveloped countries will remain security-exposed, informationally penetrated, and deprived of strategic independence.
The final domain of the gap is culture, identity, and values. Artificial intelligence will be used as a carrier of the values of its developers, reproducing Western cultural patterns and imposing languages, behaviors, and worldviews shaped by those who created it. This will lead to further weakening of the value systems of underdeveloped countries, the erosion of their languages, and their continued position as passive recipients rather than active agents.
I have attempted to summarize the most important domains in which artificial intelligence will create an unbridgeable gap between developed and underdeveloped countries. The latter will not be able to address this gap unless they free themselves from structural constraints, the inferiority complex, and political and economic corruption, and adopt genuine policies to encourage human capital and give it the opportunity to innovate and invent—so that they may confront the challenge of artificial intelligence, which will reshape the future of nations.
