By 2033, the market for artificial intelligence will reach $4.8 trillion, a report on technology and innovation by the United Nations has said. The Technology and Innovation Report 2025 was released by the United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Thursday in Geneva.
UNCTAD secretary-general Rebeca Grynspan called for stronger international cooperation to “shift the focus from technology to people, enabling countries to co-create a global artificial intelligence framework”.
Although India has invested heavily in telecommunications services, less than half the population has stable internet access. The report included two success stories from India: one from the industry – Tata Steel, which witnessed improved productivity and profit, and another, an urban healthcare experiment mMitra.
Free mobile messaging service, mMitra, disseminated health information to pregnant women in urban areas. The curated voice messages were on preventive care during different stages of pregnancy, covering 3.6 million vulnerable women.
The effort enhanced the chances of the enrolled women’s voices being heard within their families, and of them seeking professional medical services. However, over the course of the experiment, about 40% of the women dropped out. The organisation that launched the service collaborated with Google India on an AI model to find and target the pregnant women who were at greater risk of dropping out of the service.
“The model analyses each woman’s socioeconomic information, such as family size, income and age, as well as their call history, including call duration and missed calls, to predict those at highest risk of discontinuing and, of these, who would benefit most from the outreach service,” the report stated.
Introduction of the AI algorithm improved the subscription of the service by 30%. “This type of personalised messaging could be used in other sectors besides healthcare, and help optimise the distribution of limited resources,” the report stated.
Ethical guidelines
The report acknowledges the fear of misuse of data gathered by organisations. In India, which has been steadily investing on digital communication, the Indian Council of Medical Research has issued ethical guidelines for application of AI in biomedical research and healthcare with the aim of preventing unintended or deliberate misuse of patient data sets, the report points out.
The report states that AI could be a catalyst for progress, innovation and shared prosperity, only if countries actively shape its trajectory. Otherwise, the existing divide between countries will continue, it cautions.
It behoves the “governments to shift focus from technology to people, putting people at the centre of AI development”, the report states.
Published – April 05, 2025 12:35 am IST
