Global digital proliferation: uneven AI’s adaptation

Views: 60

The so-called global adoption of the AIs models -some loosely call it diffusion- has experienced an exponential growth during 2025: about one in six people worldwide are presently using GenAI tools. It is a remarkable progress for the digital technologies; however, the digital divide is still a stumbling block in the digital proliferation through the geopolitical tensions and explosive digital transition in the world. 

Digital technologies and governance
Digital technologies and governance (DTG) has become a hot issue world-wide, involving leveraging tools like AI, big data and cloud computing to enhance public sector’s efficiency, service delivery and transparency, while managing risks related to privacy, security and digital divides.
Effective digital governance transforms public services from traditional models to user-centric, inclusive digital platforms, requiring ethical data management.
Among key aspects of DTG are:
= Digital Government Strategies: Governments are shifting from merely digitizing processes to transforming public administration, focusing on proactive, personalized, and data-driven service delivery.
= Data Governance and Privacy: Secure, ethical data management is crucial for using artificial intelligence (AI) and managing public data across public sectors.
= Digital Transformation and Inclusion: While technology improves service efficiency, it also introduces risks that can widen the digital divide, necessitating human-centered, inclusive policies.
= Agile Regulation and security: Fast-evolving technologies require agile governance frameworks to handle cybersecurity risks, misinformation, and ethical dilemmas, moving beyond outdated legal safeguards.
= Public Trust & Participation: Digital governance tools are used to promote democratic discourse, increase transparency, and encourage citizen participation through online platforms.
Source: https://www.undp.org/publications/dfs-shared-vision-digital-technology-and-governance-role-governance-ensuring-digital-technologies-contribute-development-and-mitigate-risk

Background: Deep Wisdom
As a company focused on foundational agent technology, DeepWisdom has had a core product (Atom.dev) aimed to evolve “vibe coding” into “vibe working.” The company’s main team comes from leading international institutions. In 2025, DeepWisdom secured US$31 million in funding from several USD-denominated funds, including Mindworks Capital, ranking first in the domestic industry by total funding.
Its open-source organization dedicated to foundational agents has accumulated over 150,000 stars on GitHub, with flagship projects such as MetaGPT and OpenManus. Following the product launch, market response far exceeded expectations with zero promotional spend. Within just one month, the product achieved an annualized recurring revenue (ARR) of over US$1 million. Presently, the DeepWisdom’s service has rapidly grown to more than 700,000 registered users worldwide and topped the Product Hunt weekly rankings, earning broad global market high recognition.
Source and citation from: https://www.mindworks.vc/logos/deepwisdom

To track this trend, the DeepWisdom has measured AI diffusion as the share of people worldwide who have used generative AI services; this measure is derived from aggregated and anonymized Microsoft telemetry and then adjusted to reflect differences in OS and device-market share, internet penetration and country’s population.
Basic source: A. Misra, J. Wang, S. McCullers, K. White, and J. L. Ferres, “Measuring AI Diffusion: A Population-Normalized Metric for Tracking Global AI Usage,” Nov. 04, 2025, arXiv: arXiv:2511.02781. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2511.02781.

Progress in AI’s adoption
The Microsoft AI Economy Institute continued to refine the methods to “measure AI diffusion globally”, including the digital adoption across countries and regions. Showing the best advance priorities, scientific discovery and productivity gains, the Microsoft’s report has relied on the strongest cross-country data.
Despite progress in AI adoption, the data shows a widening divide: adoption in the Global North grew nearly twice as fast as in the Global South. As a result, 24.7% of the working age population in the Global North is now using these tools, compared to only 14.1% in the Global South.
Countries that have invested early in digital infrastructure, AI skilling and government adoption, such as the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Norway, Ireland, France and Spain, continue to lead. The UAE extended its lead as the first-ranked country, with 64.0% of the working age population using AI by the end of 2025, compared to 59.4% a year earlier. The UAE is leading in the “digital diffusion” by more than three percentage points over Singapore, which occupies the second place with about 61 percent’s adoption.
General reference: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/aiei/ai-diffusion/?msockid=3043950b234760192cb984bd274766c4

Changes during 2025
New data from the second half of 2025 (H2) shows the world is using artificial intelligence at record levels, but it also reveals a widening divide. Global adoption of generative AI tools reached 16.3% of the world’s population, up from 15.1% in the first half of 2025 (H1), a meaningful gain for technologies still in their early years. Presently, about one in six people world-wide are using AI to learn, work or solve problems.
Yet this progress is uneven: thus, the AI adoption in the Global North grew almost twice as fast as in the Global South, widening the gap from 9.8 to 10.6 percentage points. In short, AI’s benefits are expanding, but they are not expanding equally. Thus, in the global south reached about 14 percent, while in the global north it was about 25 percent, with the global average at over 16 percent.

Constant rise in “diffusion”
The Open-Source AI gains are evident in the new markets: one of 2025’s most unexpected developments was the rise of DeepSeek, a new AI entrant that surprised the industry with a flagship model capable of competing with top U.S. systems. Its defining feature was openness: DeepSeek released its model weights under an MIT license, giving developers global access to inspect, adapt and build on its core engine, an approach that immediately resonated with open‑source communities.
DeepSeek coupled this with an entirely free‑to‑use chatbot on web and mobile. The absence of subscription fees or payment requirements lowered the barrier for millions of users, especially in price‑sensitive regions. Reflecting this open ethos, the company invited independent researchers in September 2025 to rigorously test the model’s performance, aiming for publication in Nature, an unusually transparent move for an emerging AI player.
Source: “A look under the hood of DeepSeek’s AI models doesn’t provide all the answers.” In: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ai-model-deepseek-answers-training

The combination of openness and affordability allowed DeepSeek to gain traction in markets underserved by the Western-type AI platforms. Adoption remained low in North America and Europe, but surged in China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Belarus and across Africa, the regions and states where the US services face restrictions or where foreign digital technologies’ access was limited.
Thus, in Africa in particular, DeepSeek usage is estimated to be 2 to 4 times higher than in other regions; by contrast, countries where entrenched alternatives already meet local needs, such as Israel and South Korea, show the minimal uptake.
Several factors explain this pattern: i.e. the DeepSeek’s free service eliminated the cost barriers, requiring credit cards or paid upgrades associated with Western models.
Source: “DeepSeek vs ChatGPT: Which LLM is Better?” In: https://explodingtopics.com/blog/deepseek-vs-chatgpt

In addition, Chinese technology companies, including DeepSeek’s infrastructure partners like Huawei, actively promoted and deployed the platform in African markets through partnerships, outreach, and integration with telecom services.
Source: “China’s DeepSeek Is Beating Out OpenAI and Google in Africa,” Bloomberg. In: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-22/china-s-deepseek-pushes-into-africa-making-ai-accessible-to-millions

DeepSeek benefited from being open, free, and strategically distributed in regions often excluded from the first wave of AI adoption. This dynamic also highlights how open‑source AI can function as a geopolitical instrument, extending Chinese influence in areas where Western platforms cannot easily operate.
Source: “DeepSeek R1: Implications of a New AI Era for Africa,” – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In:
https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/03/deepseek-ai-implications-africa?lang=en

From a governance standpoint, DeepSeek’s rise shows that global AI adoption is shaped as much by access and availability as by the AIs models’ quality: thus, users gravitate toward platforms that fit their economic, linguistic and political context.
The rapid spread of an open model also raises questions about standards and safety, as open-source systems can propagate widely with limited oversight. Still, DeepSeek has clearly lowered entry barriers for millions, suggesting that the next billion AI users may emerge not from traditional technology’s hubs but from the global south states, enabled by the open-source innovations.

Trends for 2026
Geopolitics has set the strategic landscape in the digital strategies during 2026. International institutions are struggling to gain traction as major powers prioritize national interests and as the United States continues to push changes that further strain a fraying international order.
Most economies now face an acute challenge to balance sovereignty with the benefits of openness in trade, migration, technology and investment while staying aligned with allies.
Still vital is control of digital and technological infrastructure: i.e. data, cloud services, computing power, digital identity systems, semiconductors and trusted networks will be increasingly treated as paramount strategic assets. The result will be more localized infrastructure, tighter public–private coordination and more frequent regulatory spillovers across borders. Countries may rely more on uni-or-mini-lateral arrangements and sometimes mutual recognition efforts, even as competition over global standards-setting intensifies.
More in: https://www.cigionline.org/articles/digital-governance-in-2026-the-key-shifts-shaping-technology-security-and-global-power/