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The Invisibility Hypothesis: Promises of AGI and the Future of the Global South

L. Julián Lechuga López, Luis Lara

TL;DR

It is established that, as scientific discovery, economic coordination, and governance become increasingly automated, the relevance of human individuals may become conditional on access to infrastructure, institutional inclusion, and geopolitical circumstances rather than skills or intelligence.

Abstract

Discussions surrounding Artificial General Intelligence have largely focused on technical feasibility, timelines, and existential risk, often treating its social impact as being the same across different populations. Less attention has been paid to how advanced AI systems may interact with existing global inequalities. This paper examines the implications of AGI for people in the Global South, arguing that the availability of highly autonomous, general-purpose cognitive systems does not guarantee equitable outcomes. We establish that, as scientific discovery, economic coordination, and governance become increasingly automated, the relevance of human individuals may become conditional on access to infrastructure, institutional inclusion, and geopolitical circumstances rather than skills or intelligence. Under this setting, the Global South faces different pathways: in the best case, geographic location is no longer relevant as AGI fully democratizes access to knowledge and essential services for everyone in the globe; in the worst case, existing structural constraints are severely amplified, rendering already marginalized populations not merely economically invisible, but functionally irrelevant to global systems. We ground this analysis in empirical signals from contemporary AI deployment and extend to potential trajectories, highlighting both risk and opportunity pathways for Latin America, Africa, and South Asia.

The Invisibility Hypothesis: Promises of AGI and the Future of the Global South

TL;DR

It is established that, as scientific discovery, economic coordination, and governance become increasingly automated, the relevance of human individuals may become conditional on access to infrastructure, institutional inclusion, and geopolitical circumstances rather than skills or intelligence.

Abstract

Discussions surrounding Artificial General Intelligence have largely focused on technical feasibility, timelines, and existential risk, often treating its social impact as being the same across different populations. Less attention has been paid to how advanced AI systems may interact with existing global inequalities. This paper examines the implications of AGI for people in the Global South, arguing that the availability of highly autonomous, general-purpose cognitive systems does not guarantee equitable outcomes. We establish that, as scientific discovery, economic coordination, and governance become increasingly automated, the relevance of human individuals may become conditional on access to infrastructure, institutional inclusion, and geopolitical circumstances rather than skills or intelligence. Under this setting, the Global South faces different pathways: in the best case, geographic location is no longer relevant as AGI fully democratizes access to knowledge and essential services for everyone in the globe; in the worst case, existing structural constraints are severely amplified, rendering already marginalized populations not merely economically invisible, but functionally irrelevant to global systems. We ground this analysis in empirical signals from contemporary AI deployment and extend to potential trajectories, highlighting both risk and opportunity pathways for Latin America, Africa, and South Asia.
Paper Structure (11 sections, 1 figure)

This paper contains 11 sections, 1 figure.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. The Invisibility Hypothesis
  3. The Promises of AGI
  4. Capability Without Omnipotence.
  5. Global South.
  6. Promises and Tension.
  7. The Future of the Global South
  8. The Utopia: Location Stops Mattering.
  9. The Collapse: From Exploitation to Irrelevance.
  10. The Middle Ground.
  11. Conclusion

Figures (1)

  • Figure 1: Global Structural Asymmetries on the Impact of AGI.a) GDP per capita highlights the concentration of economic output outside much of the Global South. b) Political corruption perception index illustrates institutional fragility across large regions of the Global South. c) Global population distribution shows that the majority of the world’s population resides in regions with comparatively low economic output and weaker institutional capacity. Together, these panels illustrate the coexistence of large latent human potential and persistent structural constraints, shaping whether AGI enables broad-based empowerment or selective exclusion. Figure sources: Our World in Data owid_gdpowid_corruptionowid_population.