The following article was written by Dr. Cornelia C. Walther, a visiting scholar at Wharton and director of global alliance POZE. A humanitarian practitioner who spent over 20 years at the United Nations, Walther currently works with the UN in Morocco and Sunway University’s Center for Planetary Health in Malaysia on developing national blueprints for prosocial AI that are designed, delivered, and deployed to serve people and planet. Her new book Artificial Intelligence for Inspired Action — or AI4IA — comes out in February 2026.

We are the last analogue generation, the final cohort who remembers life before algorithms began to mediate our relationships and choices. The first iPhone launched just 18 years ago. Today, artificial intelligence is reshaping how we think, decide, and experience reality, from dating to credit decisions to medical diagnoses. This unique position grants us a critical perspective — we can compare the world pre and post the explosion of generative AI. This equips us with a tantalizing opportunity to shape the hybrid future for good and leave the next generation with an algorithmic architecture that is conducive to the flourishing of people and planet. The current trend, however, is not in sync with that vision.

What Is the Problem?

Three dominant AI paradigms have emerged: the United States’ market-driven model, China’s state-coordinated approach, and the European Union’s regulatory framework. Yet for the Global South — 85% of humanity — none of these models adequately addresses the interconnected challenges of development, dignity, and sustainable growth.

They are being asked to choose a side, but none of the options truly serve them.

Why Is This Happening?

This gap exists because current AI development, driven largely by the Global North, overlooks critical dynamics. This ABCD of underappreciated AI issues affects everyone, but the Global South has both the most to lose and, perhaps, the greatest agility to find solutions. The Global North, having largely set the terms for the first three industrial revolutions, is often locked into models that have left our global society in a precarious place. This Fourth Industrial Revolution cannot be left to the private sector alone; it must be co-created by all parts of society — public, private, academic, and civil — across all continents.

Agency Decay:

As we offload more cognitive effort to AI, our capacity for self-directed decision-making weakens. Personalization systems narrow our exposure to diverse viewpoints, artificially reducing our range of choices for everything from news to job postings.

Bond Erosion:

AI-mediated interactions and digital companionship can diminish empathy and increase polarization. In regions where strong communal ties form the primary social safety net, this algorithmic isolation carries existential consequences.

Climate Conundrum:

AI systems have an expanding environmental footprint; from the emission generated by training large language models to the use of land for data centers and to the water required for cooling them, we are witnessing a dynamic whereby the needs of AI systems are given priority over those of human beings. This opaque and growing burden impacts the very countries least responsible for historical emissions. Furthermore, they face pressure to adopt technologies that not only worsen the acute challenges that they are experiencing but are often unfit for their needs.

Divided Societies:

When 98% of AI research comes from wealthy institutions, the resulting systems embed assumptions that are irrelevant or harmful elsewhere. This is digital colonialism through code. Billions of individuals in the Global South are still struggling for basic necessities, and as massive funding is channeled toward generative AI, we must ensure the resulting progress serves those most in need.

Solidarity transforms weakness into strength.

How Can We Build a Better Alternative?

This is not a new problem. In 1955, 29 newly independent nations gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, for what skeptics dismissed as impossible: creating an alternative to Cold War bipolarity. Instead of choosing a side, leaders like Sukarno, Nehru, and Nasser charted the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

The NAM demonstrated that 120 nations could influence international affairs through solidarity, united around shared principles of sovereignty and mutual benefit.

Today, we need a “Fourth Path” for AI, inspired by that same spirit. This path is prosocial AI: systems deliberately tailored to local contexts, trained on representative data, tested for equity impacts, and targeted toward collective flourishing. This approach offers a different compass: pro-people, pro-planet, and pro-potential.

This “4T Framework” is already being put into practice:

  • Tailored: AI systems must reflect local languages, contexts, and values. Kenya’s M-Pesa revolutionized financial inclusion by understanding how money moved through social networks in a cash-based economy, not by copying Western banking apps.
  • Trained: When facial recognition systems train predominantly on lighter-skinned faces, they fail dramatically for darker-skinned individuals. Prosocial AI demands representative data, fair compensation for data-providing communities, and inclusive development teams.
  • Tested: Evaluation must assess social impact, not just technical performance. Does this loan algorithm perpetuate discrimination? Does this traffic optimization sacrifice environmental justice for efficiency? Testing must ask: Who does it work for, and who might it harm?
  • Targeted: Systems should aim for collective flourishing. An AI managing a nation’s electricity grid could optimize purely for cost, or it could be targeted to balance equitable access, renewable energy integration, and climate resilience simultaneously.

The NAM’s greatest strength was South-South cooperation. This principle is the catalyst for prosocial AI. This leadership is already taking shape at a regional level. Both the African Union (AU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are developing continental AI strategies. Unlike the dominant paradigms, these frameworks are built from the ground up, prioritizing inclusive growth, data sovereignty, and solutions for shared challenges.

Within these regions, countries like Malaysia and Morocco are emerging as potential catalysts. With middle-income economies, young and digitally-native populations, rich linguistic diversity, and long cultural heritages, they are uniquely positioned to champion the Fourth Path. By fostering vibrant, values-based AI ecosystems, they can demonstrate how and why the successor to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) must be Hybrid Development Goals (HDGs) — goals that curate a symbiosis of technological progress and human flourishing, with planetary dignity.

These efforts show that solidarity transforms weakness into strength. When Nigeria develops an AI system for diagnosing malaria and shares its methodology with Indonesia, both benefit from collaborative learning in a way that is impossible in a competitive commercial framework. While individual developing countries cannot dictate terms to tech giants, 120 countries representing 85% of humanity can insist on data sovereignty, algorithmic transparency, and more than one seat at the governance table.

Our Moment to Choose Hybrid Humanity

The algorithmic architecture taking shape now will shape humanity for decades, in both material and immaterial ways. It will impact how we think, feel, choose, and interact — but also who decides for whom, and about what. In that context the question isn’t so much about which country will first acquire AI supremacy, but how a hybrid community can be configured that offers every human, every country, and every continent an opportunity to fulfill their inherent potential — without jeopardizing the ecosystem on which future generations depend. Will we be able (and willing) to shape a system that honors our full humanity or accept those optimized for user engagement and profitability?

Seventy years ago, leaders in Bandung declared the impossible possible. Today, we can declare a Fourth Path possible: an approach to AI development that is pro-people, pro-planet, and pro-potential.