Intelligence Beyond Borders: Building AI for the Next Billion — Toward an Ethical, Equitable Future

As the Global Dialogue on AI Governance unfolded in Geneva, AIQUAINT convened an official side event to ask the question that will define this decade: Are we building AI for the next billion, or just handing it down to them?

The Global AI Divide, by the Numbers

Over a billion people now use conversational AI every week — yet roughly 75% of the world’s AI compute sits in the US, ~15% in China, and just 10% everywhere else. Some 118 countries, mostly in the Global South, remain outside major AI governance conversations. The divide is no longer about access to AI. It’s about adoption — and ultimately, who gets to co-create it.

The Panel

• Gowri Shankar Sivabala — AI and Quantum International Hub, UAE (AIQUAINT)
• Dr. Christopher Abraham — SP Jain School of Global Management, Dubai Campus
• Shakilla Jhungeer — Global Alliance for Artificial Intelligence
• Amna Usman Chaudhry — Frontier Technology Strategist

Five Takeaways for an AI-Ready, Equitable Future

1. Govern for context, not conformity. One-size-fits-all rules create compliance costs, not protection. The fix: proportional regulatory sandboxes and “Minimum Viable Governance” — flexible by risk, tuned to local reality.
2. Access ≠ benefit. 74% of students expect AI to shape their careers; only 44% feel their teachers are ready. The answer isn’t banning AI — it’s human-led, AI-enabled learning that grades judgment, prompting and fact-checking over memorisation.
3. Protect durable skills. Cognitive offloading is real. Creativity, critical thinking and imagination must be practised, not outsourced — or we lose the human edge AI can’t replace.
4. Move youth from consultation to design. Inclusion must reach who shapes the systems — payments, credit, jobs. That means youth policy labs, ethics clinics and sandboxes built for young innovators, not just enterprises.
5. Bake ethics in at the design stage. Fairness, transparency, explainability and accountability can’t be bolted on later. They belong in the blueprint.

The Path Forward

The frameworks already exist. The real work now is implementation — and that responsibility trickles down to every one of us. This panel didn’t answer every question, but it sparked new ones. And that’s exactly the point.
Grateful to the United Nations for the platform, to GAFAI for partnering with AIQUAINT, and to every attendee who joined us from across the world.

Read our public consultation contribution to the AI Dialogue Report: aidialoguereport.org/explorer/38