The West is debating AI’s future with half the world absent

On July 13, more than 200 leading economists and AI researchers, including 16 Nobel laureates, signed an open letter organised by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. Its warning was stark: artificial intelligence may drive an economic transformation “larger than the Industrial Revolution” compressed into a fraction of the time, and that we “must act now” to build the institutions to steer it. We agree with every word. Then we scanned the signatory list. Four in five signatories come from the...