AI and Economic Development

Jul 13-2026   

[Langrun·Gezheng] Issue No. 202 – Distinguished Think Tank Series

Time: 16:00–17:30, July 13, 2026
Venue: Room 420, Chengze Garden, Peking University
Language: English 

Program

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About the Speaker

Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics.

He assumed this position on September 1, 2022. Previously, he served as the World Bank's Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions, where he played a pivotal role in shaping the Bank's response to the cascading shocks that have battered developing economies since 2020. From 2016 to 2021, he was a Professor of Public Policy at Duke University and a non-resident Senior Fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution.

Gill is best known as the lead author of the landmark World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography. Among his most influential intellectual contributions is the concept of the "middle-income trap" —a term he coined to describe the phenomenon of economies reaching a certain income threshold and then falling into protracted growth stagnation. Under his direction, the World Development Report 2024 laid out a clear pathway for escaping this trap: embracing modern technologies and igniting innovation-led development.

Lecture Abstract

This lecture will unveil the principal findings of the forthcoming World Development Report 2026 and outline the World Bank Group's evolving engagement with artificial intelligence.

The lecture will assess what AI, as a general-purpose technology, means for the well-being of billions of people living in low- and middle-income countries, and how it can be brought to bear on development challenges that have long resisted rapid resolution. For the vast majority of developing countries, catching up with the technological frontier is an unrealistic ambition. Nor is the direct transplantation of new AI technologies from global markets sufficient, for AI's effectiveness depends profoundly on local conditions. For developing and emerging economies, the overriding priority is adaptation: the tailored modification of new AI technologies to accomplish in a decade what might once have taken a century—across domains as diverse as disease diagnosis, raising the quality of primary and secondary education, empowering micro and small enterprises, guiding smallholder farmers, and optimizing public service delivery. Unlocking AI's potential also means managing the attendant risks, including possible job displacement, disinformation, government intrusion into individual privacy, and geopolitical dependency.

To advance this agenda, the World Bank Group will pilot a mechanism called "Small AI in a Suitcase," designed to ease local AI entrepreneurs' access to computing power and technical training, and to catalyze private-sector-led adaptation and deployment of lightweight AI solutions in resource-scarce settings. The initiative will focus on practical, localized AI solutions, notably in education, health, and agriculture. Where conditions permit, it will also support operations in fragile, conflict-affected, and violent (FCV) contexts as well as small states, harnessing tools that can function even with limited internet connectivity to strengthen crisis response capabilities—such as early warning systems, damage assessment, crisis mapping, and displacement monitoring.

Within the World Bank's Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC), the application of AI is being steered toward a central objective: dramatically lowering the barriers through which policymakers and researchers in developing countries access cutting-edge analytical work.