Kathy Gibson reports – Established countries have traditionally led in technology adoption – but emerging economies are seizing the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence (AI) to leapfrog their global counterparts to use AI to drive real innovation.
Guy Diedrich, senior vice-president and global innovation officer at Cisco, adds that Africa in particular has a big advantage with its median age of 19 across the continent.
“Younger generations are taking up AI a lot quicker than older generations,” he says. “So emerging economies with young populations are well-positioned.”
Diedrich unpacks the finding from the Digital Wellbeing Index from Cisco and OECD’s WISE Centre that explores not just how widely people use AI around the world, but who benefits, who bears the risks, and how digital life is shaping well-being.
One of the biggest challenges to AI adoption in emerging markets is infrastructure, with just 38% of Africans currently online.
But availability is not necessarily the problem, Diedrich adds, with accessibility being a more pressing concern.
“Emerging economies must address the notion of accessibility, and then we will see them not just leaprfrog but lead in the AI age,” he says.
Romina Boarini, director of OECD WISE Centre, agrees that emerging economies do well in terms of AI adoption – in some countries adoption rates have doubled.
Part of the reason for this could be that a number of developing market countries have been early adopters of national strategies.
“Emerging economies today represent 90% of those that have ambitious plans that allow for speedy and smooth adoption,” she points out. “So the rapid adoption is not happening by co-incidence – there is strong action driving it.”
She points to the Indian government, which has been very active in enabling AI and will next year host the AI Impact Summit.
Other factors contributing to rapid adoption are strategies like cloud-first and open source use that have emerging economies position themselves to take advantage of AI.
“And the companies in these countries tend to be SMEs, which are often the organisations better able to quickly adopt AI,” Boarini says.
Challenges include the rapid pace of technology change, as well as an ongoing skills shortage.