LocationsNavigating the Next Great Divergence: What Does Responsible AI Look Like in a Country of Nomads?
December 2, 2025
Artificial Intelligence is transforming societies at extraordinary speed. Yet while its benefits can be immense, they are unlikely to be distributed evenly. “The Next Great Divergence: Why AI May Widen Inequality Between Countries” report by UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific (RBAP) warns that countries with weaker digital and governance foundations risk falling further behind as AI adoption accelerates elsewhere.
This divergence stems from a dual risk: slower adoption on one hand, and on the other, the danger of rushing ahead without properly contextualizing and testing AI for Mongolia’s environment, leaving the country more exposed to AI-driven shocks. Countries lacking infrastructure, skills, and governance systems may struggle to capture AI’s gains while still deepening job losses, data exclusion, and rising energy demands.
Against this backdrop, Mongolia’s story offers an exceptional narrative: how a country with unique challenges is striving to make AI a bridge, not a barrier.
Global Risks, Local Choices
Mongolia, a young democracy nestled between two global powers, spans a large territory with just 3.5 million people. Connectivity gaps, climate extremes, and out-migration remain daily challenges.
So, when Mongolia began exploring artificial intelligence, it wasn’t out of a desire to be at the technological frontier. It was because of something very urgent: the need to solve real problems without leaving anyone behind.
AI Workshop in Mongolia
Charting an Inclusive AI Path
When the Government of Mongolia approached UNDP, the question wasn’t “How can we adopt AI?” but rather: “Can AI help us leapfrog our challenges without creating new inequalities?”
That question became the foundation for Mongolia’s responsible AI journey.
Mongolia has a strong foundation for digital transformation, driven by a young, digitally literate population, 84% internet penetration, and the rapid expansion of e-Mongolia as a central platform for public services. To fully harness emerging technologies, the country needs to work to address key system-level needs, including expanding the ICT workforce, currently estimated at 27,000 professionals, improving nationwide connectivity, strengthening data governance, and establishing a formal AI ethics framework.
Together with the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Communication, UNDP launched two initiatives:
- An AI Landscape Assessment to gauge readiness across infrastructure, skills, data, and ethics
- A Futures and Foresight Exercise to imagine what an AI-driven Mongolia could look like in 2050, the good, the bad, and the possible
These insights shaped Mongolia’s first National AI and Big Data Strategy, finalized in 2025. Its vision: for Mongolia to become one of the leading countries in Asia by using AI to solve pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges.
First conference on National Strategy for AI and Big Data
The strategy puts responsible AI at its core, anchored in four strategic goals and concrete projects backed by dedicated financing. Key priorities include training 60,000 civil servants, developing 50 AI solutions in governance, mining, and health, and establishing Mongolia’s first National AI Cluster Center to support research and innovation.
But beyond numbers, what makes this strategy different is the lens through which it was built. Every goal was tested against three questions: Who benefits? Who might be harmed and what safeguards are needed? How can we build solutions that work with what is already available locally?
Responsible AI, Mongolia realized, starts not with algorithms, but with people, governance, and inclusion.
AI Workshop in Mongolia
Three Lessons for Other Countries
Mongolia’s experience offers three takeaways:
- You don’t need to be an AI superpower to start, but you do need honesty. By combining self-assessment with broad public engagement, Mongolia built an implementable, context-appropriate roadmap.
- Governance isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the foundation. Data governance, privacy, transparency, and inclusivity were built into Mongolia’s AI vision from the start.
- Make AI reflect your values, Mongolia’s strategy weaves in nomadic heritage, climate goals, and rural inclusion. Mongolia’s strategy weaves in its nomadic heritage, climate goals, and rural inclusion. From AI-powered pasture management to dzud (harsh winter) prediction, technology here carries cultural meaning, it’s not about coding efficiency, but coding for dignity and sustainability.
This is sovereign AI development: AI that serves a nation’s own priorities, ecosystems, and people.
Mongolian nomad
A Choice, Not a Foregone Conclusion
The RBAP report highlights that the next Great Divergence is not inevitable. Whether AI narrows or widens gaps will depend on the choices countries make now. Mongolia’s AI journey has just begun, but the approach is promising as its strategies are people-centered, adaptive, and inclusive.
As the country moves toward the digital future, its guiding spirit remains clear: Who benefits? Who’s left out? What kind of future are we building?
Because when those questions are asked, AI stops being just a tool of automation or convenience, it becomes a tool of human development.
