Technology and Innovation Report 2021

The Technology and Innovation Report critically examines the possibility of frontier technologies such as AI, robotics and gene-editing widening existing inequalities and creating new ones. The Report focuses on low and middle-income developing countries and least developed countries, as well as on the most vulnerable segments of societies while providing discussion on the effects on high-income countries as parts of the broader context and major drivers of frontier technologies. The Report argues that frontier technologies are essential for sustainable development, but they also could accentuate initial inequalities. It is up to policies to reduce this risk and make frontier technologies contribute to increasing equality. Low- and middle-income developing countries and the least developing countries cannot afford to miss the new wave of rapid technological change.