{"id":31211,"date":"2026-05-07T16:43:39","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T16:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/31211\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T16:43:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T16:43:39","slug":"ai-use-surges-globally-but-rich-poor-divide-widens-microsoft-says-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/31211\/","title":{"rendered":"AI use surges globally but rich-poor divide widens, Microsoft says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Generative artificial intelligence is being used by 17.8% of the world’s working-age population, but the gap between wealthy and developing nations continues to widen, according to a report published Tuesday by Microsoft<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the first quarter of 2026, 27.5 percent of people aged 15-64 in developed countries used a generative AI tool, compared with 15.4% in the developing world – a gap that widened by 1.5 percentage points from the second half of 2025, according to the report’s estimates.<\/p>\n

The divide stems from significant inequality in access to internet connectivity, basic digital skills and electricity, according to the Microsoft AI Economy Institute.<\/p>\n

AI model performance – historically stronger in English as most of the major AI companies are based in the US – is also slowing the spread of such tools in non-English-speaking countries.<\/p>\n

But progress in processing non-European languages is fueling a catch-up in adoption in some countries, particularly in Asia, the US tech giant noted.<\/p>\n

The United Arab Emirates tops the ranking of AI usage at 70.1%, followed by Singapore, Norway, Ireland and France.<\/p>\n

The estimates were based primarily on measurements from computers running Windows and Microsoft products such as Bing and Copilot.<\/p>\n

They only partially captured usage on Apple devices, and consolidated data was lacking for Russia, Iran and China.<\/p>\n

The United States – home to dominant large AI models like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini – ranked only 21st, at 31.3%.<\/p>\n

AI usage in China – the world’s second-largest economy which is jostling with the US for an edge in the AI race – was 16.4%, the report said.<\/p>\n

Pushing back against fears of job losses driven by automation, Microsoft argued in the report that AI coding tools “could increase demand for developer jobs.”<\/p>\n

The company cautioned, however, that “it is still too early to know the full impact” of AI on the labor market.<\/p>\n

For the first time in its history, the company itself offered voluntary departures to nearly 9,000 of its US-based employees in April.<\/p>\n

According to Layoffs.fyi<\/a>, a private aggregator, nearly 99,000 people have been laid off in the tech sector since January 1, primarily in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Generative artificial intelligence is being used by 17.8% of the world’s working-age population, but the gap between wealthy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[20130,20127,420,7829,20132,20129,20133,20131,320,7828,20128,20134,20135],"class_list":{"0":"post-31211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-microsoft","8":"tag-ai-jobs-market","9":"tag-ai-usage-statistics","10":"tag-azure","11":"tag-azure-ai","12":"tag-china-ai-usage","13":"tag-generative-ai-adoption","14":"tag-impact-of-ai-on-jobs","15":"tag-layoffs-fyi","16":"tag-microsoft","17":"tag-microsoft-ai","18":"tag-microsoft-ai-report","19":"tag-top-countries-for-ai-usage","20":"tag-wealthy-vs-developing-nations-ai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}