AI-Powered Digital Identity Systems and the New Digital Divide: The Case of World

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to feature prominently in global discourses on sustainable development as a potential solution to long-standing social and economic issues across the global South. In recent years, there has been increased interest by public and private actors to develop and deploy AI-powered digital solutions positioned to help close the digital divide—a phenomenon that has been traditionally framed as the gap between the connected and unconnected. Framed against a backdrop of “tech for good,” developments in AI and other emerging technologies have led to new challenges, including algorithmic awareness, a new dimension of the digital divide that attends to data and data-related inequalities. This colloquium paper uses World, a digital identity project co-founded by American tech company Open AI that combines AI, biometrics and blockchain-based technologies, as a case study to explore the ethical implications of private sector-led digital initiatives in the global South. Despite claims that digital identity projects help promote social and economic inclusion, we show that projects such as World can intensity existing inequalities through data extraction methods. We argue that the company's activities in countries such as Kenya are possible because of the digital divide and gaps in regulatory frameworks on AI in the global South.