UN digital envoy warns AI influence is concentrated in a ‘few zip codes,’ calls for global action

United Nations’ Under-Secretary and Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies, Amandeep Singh Gill, appears via Zoom to deliver the opening keynote at Seattle University’s 2026 Ethics and Tech conference on May 15, 2026. (Photo: Ken Yeung) Big tech companies are deploying compute clusters with millions of GPUs to train and run AI models. But across the entire continent of Africa — encompassing 54 countries and more than 1.5 billion people — fewer than 1,000 GPUs are available for resea