Artificial Intelligence is redrawing the global map of opportunity and risk. And nowhere is this more visible than in Asia and the Pacific on both ends. That’s why, this December, UNDP is launching The Next Great Divergence: Why AI may widen inequality between countries, a regional report with a clear message: AI is accelerating, but not everyone and every country has a head-start, is on the same path or can equally manage the disruptions.

While some countries are sprinting ahead, others are stuck at the starting line, lacking the digital infrastructure, skills, or governance mechanisms to keep pace. Yet, the shake-up from this transformation is already being felt everywhere.

The report offers some key takeaways for all of us working on development across Asia and the Pacific and wondering how to, and how much, to embed AI to extend and accelerate development strategy, capability and reach. Some reflections:

• AI must be designed and delivered through a triple lens of People, Economy, and Governance. AI can empower or exclude. It can spark innovation or displace jobs. It can make institutions more agile, where access is inclusive and safeguards are strong.
• Asia and the Pacific is the world’s vast and diverse testing ground. The region is innovating fast on AI. It is also the region that faces stark contrasts in per capita incomes (a 200-fold gap) and gender gaps loom large. These dynamics can amplify AI-related biases, with impacts that vary widely across communities, generations, and countries.
• Divergence is complex. It won’t come from one source. It will emerge from the interplay of unequal capabilities, economic structures, and governance gaps. It can also be tracked, understood and addressed.
• There is no one size or one way. Countries need tailored roadmaps, grounded in their realities, capacities, and ambitions. The report provides clear markers and cases that demonstrate this.

So what do we refer to as the “Next Great Divergence”? A period of rising inequality between countries due to AI, that is already upon us —unless countries take decisive corrective action now. It is the widening gap between those who shape AI and those who are shaped by it. Between countries that build the tools and systems, and those that absorb the impact. This could cause the reversal of the Great Convergence, the era when technologies like electricity lifted hundreds of millions from poverty. The Next Great Divergence is about the next frontier of technology but also about power, access, and agency. It is with people – their governments and leaders, business and investments, policy and institutional choices – if to choose convergence or divergence.

 The report lands at a critical moment, building on the findings of this year’s Global Human Development Report and rooting them in the lived realities of our region the report challenges us to put AI at the core of our policy and programme work, not as an afterthought but as a driver of human development.

It asks us, as UNDP, to lean in with urgency and humility: to listen, to learn, and to help countries to be in charge of charting their own course. There is no single roadmap, but there is a shared imperative: to ensure that AI becomes a force accelerating prosperity for all.

For our UNDP teams, it is a call to raise our own skills and systems, to see how we can transform these insights into a new generation of programmes and engagement with all our stakeholders, to drive to that place of convergence. And soon!