A Beginner's Guide to AI Why AI Could Become the Next Big Economic Divider
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Jan 5, 2026 Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing our world, but its rising costs are creating a growing economic divide. As powerful models become more expensive, only wealthy institutions can afford to innovate, leaving others behind. The podcast explores how this leads to educational inequalities and access issues across developing regions. With case studies showcasing real-life implications, experts emphasize the need for public investment and responsible access to ensure that AI benefits everyone, not just the privileged few.
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AI As Infrastructure Concentrates Power
- Advanced AI is becoming infrastructure that concentrates power where compute and capital sit.
- Cost structure, not malice, drives consolidation and compounds advantages for wealthy organisations.
Training And Inference Drive Persistent Costs
- Training needs specialised hardware, months of experiments, and huge energy and engineering budgets.
- Inference also costs continuously since each user query triggers computation across data centres.
The Compounding Advantage Loop
- Wealthy players reinvest gains into better models, creating a feedback loop of advantage.
- Smaller players face rising costs and risk being squeezed out or limited to weaker tools.