AI Computing Power Creates a Global Digital Divide

Last month, Sam Altman, CEO of artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI, visited the construction site of the company’s new data center project in Texas. This site, bigger than New York’s Central Park, is estimated to cost $60 billion and will be one of the most powerful computing hubs ever created, set to be operational as soon as next year.

Around the same time, Nicolás Wolovick, a computer science professor at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina, was running what counts as one of his country’s most advanced AI computing hubs. His setup was in a converted room at the university, where wires snaked between aging AI chips and server computers. “Everything is becoming more split,” Dr. Wolovick said. “We are losing.”

The New Digital Divide

Artificial intelligence has created a new digital divide, fracturing the world between nations with the computing power for building cutting-edge AI systems and those without. This divide is influencing geopolitics and global economics, creating new dependencies and prompting a desperate rush to not be excluded from a technology race that could reorder economies, drive scientific discovery, and change the way people live and work.

Concentrated Power

The biggest beneficiaries are the United States, China, and the European Union. These regions host more than half of the world’s most powerful data centers, which are used for developing the most complex AI systems. According to data compiled by Oxford University researchers, only 32 countries, or about 16 percent of nations, have these large facilities filled with microchips and computers, giving them “compute power.”

Global Inequality

The United States and China, which dominate the tech world, have particular influence. American and Chinese companies operate more than 90 percent of the data centers that other companies and institutions use for AI work. In contrast, Africa and South America have almost no AI computing hubs, while India has at least five and Japan at least four. More than 150 countries have nothing.

Impacts of the Divide

Today’s AI data centers dwarf their predecessors, which powered simpler tasks like email and video streaming. Vast, power-hungry, and packed with powerful chips, these hubs cost billions to build and require infrastructure that not every country can provide. The effects of the gap between those with such computing power and those without it are already playing out.

The world’s most used AI systems, which power chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are more proficient and accurate in English and Chinese, languages spoken in the countries where the compute power is concentrated. Tech giants with access to the top equipment are using AI to process data, automate tasks, and develop new services. Scientific breakthroughs, including drug discovery and gene editing, rely on powerful computers. AI-powered weapons are making their way onto battlefields.

Limitations for Nations Without AI Power

Nations with little or no AI compute power are running into limits in scientific work, in the growth of young companies, and in talent retention. Some officials have become alarmed by how the need for computing resources has made them beholden to foreign corporations and governments.

“Oil-producing countries have had an oversized influence on international affairs; in an AI-powered near future, compute producers could have something similar since they control access to a critical resource,” said Vili Lehdonvirta, an Oxford professor who conducted the research on AI data centers.

Political and Economic Implications

AI computing power is so precious that the components in data centers, such as microchips, have become a crucial part of foreign and trade policies for China and the United States, which are jockeying for influence in the Persian Gulf, in Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. At the same time, some countries are beginning to pour public funds into AI infrastructure, aiming for more control over their technological futures.

The Oxford researchers mapped the world’s AI data centers, information that companies and governments often keep secret. To create a representative sample, they went through the customer websites of nine of the world’s biggest cloud-service providers to see what compute power was available and where their hubs were at the end of last year. The companies were the U.S. firms Amazon, Google, and Microsoft; China’s Tencent, Alibaba, and Huawei; and Europe’s Exoscale, Hetzner, and OVHcloud.

The Future of the Divide

“We have a computing divide at the heart of the AI revolution,” said Lacina Koné, the director general of Smart Africa, which coordinates digital policy across the continent. He added: “It’s not merely a hardware problem. It’s the sovereignty of our digital future.”

Real-World Impact

There has long been a tech gap between rich and developing countries. Over the past decade, cheap smartphones, expanding internet coverage, and flourishing app-based businesses led some experts to conclude that the divide was diminishing. Last year, 68 percent of the world’s population used the internet, up from 33 percent in 2012, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency.

But in April, the U.N. warned that the digital gap would widen without action on AI. Just 100 companies, mostly in the United States and China, were behind 40 percent of global investment in the technology, the U.N. said. The biggest tech companies were “gaining control over the technology’s future.”

Personal Perspectives

“Sometimes I want to cry,” Dr. Wolovick said. “We are doing our best, but it’s not enough. We need more support, more resources, and more collaboration to bridge this gap.”

The global AI divide is a complex issue with far-reaching implications. As the world becomes more dependent on AI, the need for equitable access to computing power becomes increasingly urgent. Without significant changes, the divide will continue to widen, affecting not just individual nations but the global community as a whole.