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Over the last five years, artificial intelligence has shifted from a fringe interest to one of the most important drivers of global economic growth. So important has the technology become that the United Nations Security Council held its first open debate on artificial intelligence last month. While little of substance was achieved, a General Assembly resolution authorizing the creation of an independent scientific panel on AI may have a more enduring impact. One of the core questions this panel will seek to answer is how AI can support sustainable economic development without entrenching inequality. The potential dangers here have deep historical parallels. AI runs on compute, cloud capacity, and dataresources that are concentrated in the hands of countries in the Global North. Africa, for example, hosts less than 1% of global data center capacity, leaving the continent reliant on expensive infrastructure abroad. Even an IT powerhouse like India hosts just 3% of global capacity, despite being home to nearly 20% of the worlds population. Meanwhile, workers across the Global South are earning as little as $2 an hour creating, cleaning, and labeling data for use in Western models. A new digital colonialism? To some, this looks like a digital version of the kind of resource extraction associated with the age of empires: labor and data flow inexorably north, where they create economic value, but little of this value finds its way back into the pockets of developing nations. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/creator-faisalhoque.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/faisal-hoque.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Ready to thrive at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity?","dek":"Faisal Hoques books, podcast, and his companies give leaders the frameworks and platforms to align purpose, people, process, and techturning disruption into meaningful, lasting progress.","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/faisalhoque.com","theme":{"bg":"#02263c","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420512,"imageMobileId":91420514}} The reality is that these patterns are driven by market forces rather than imperial ideology, but the historical echoes are troubling nonetheless. Whatever the motivations, we know that this kind of concentration of power can do long-term economic and social damage. In some cases, the results are felt only in the underserved countries. AI systems trained to deliver healthcare to Western patients, for instance, can be dangerously inaccurate when working with other populations, limiting the transferability of the advances made in the West. Similarly, researchers at Columbia University have found that Large Language Models are less able to understand and represent the societal values of countries that have limited digital resources available in local languages. These limitations are just the tip of the iceberg. AI is not just a productivity toolits a force multiplier for innovation. It will shape how we farm, teach, heal, and govern in the future. If the Global South remains a passive consumer of imported AI systems, it risks losing not just economic opportunity but digital sovereignty. The Industrial Revolution brought extraordinary wealth to Europe and North America while locking much of the world into dependency for generations. AI could repeat that cyclemore rapidly and at an even greater scale. Why this should worry every global business The irony is that this approach hurts everyone, including the companies driving it. In terms of population, India has overtaken China while Nigeria and other African nations are enjoying booming birthrates. These countries represent tomorrows largest markets. Yet multinationals that treat them as data factories without trying to situate that data in its local context will find that they dont understand the customers they will desperately need tomorrow. A model that misunderstands how most of the world thinks about family, risk, or trust is a model doomed to fail. We have already seen how this trend can play out. The mobile money transfer company M-Pesa revolutionized banking in Kenya while Western banks were still trying to penetrate the market with credit cards. Today, Indian companies are developing chatbots that can speak to the hundreds of millions who communicate daily in so-called low resource languages. Unless multinationals begin to think intentionally about how they can serve these underserved populations, they will find themselves looking in from the outside once these markets mature. The path forward Avoiding the dangers of algorithmic colonialism and earning a position in emerging markets for AI products and services requires deliberate action from governments, businesses, and global institutions. Data centers, power supply, and research capacity should be financed like roads and ports, with blended capital from development banks and sovereign funds. Without local compute capacity, nations will inevitably remain digital renters, not owners. Governments should also establish data trusts to negotiate how their citizens information trains global models, including setting benefit-sharing and transparency requirements. AI annotation work should pay living wages with proper labor protections. And critically, we need investment in open-source models, multilingual datasets, and local developers, so solutions are built with communities, not just for them. Some companies are already changing course. They are investing in local infrastructure, creating genuine partnerships, and recognizing that sustainable profits come from creating value with communities, not extracting it from them. They understand that todays data creators and workers will be tomorrows consumers, and, potentially, tomorrows innovators as well, if they are given the chance. AI has the potential to be a great global equalizeror it could become the most powerful driver of inequality in human history. We have seen what happens when transformative technology is hoarded: inequality deepens, resentment grows, and instability follows. If we want to write a different storyone in which the Global North and South cocreate the future and share the benefits of artificial intelligencewe must act now, before the gap becomes unbridgeable. 4 things leaders can do today to start bridging the AI divide 1. Audit your AIs eographic blind spots today. Map where your training data comes from and which populations it represents. If more than 80% comes from Western sources, you run the risk of not being able to represent or communicate effectively with consumers from much of the world. Work to diversify your data if that is feasible, or develop localized AI systems that are trained or tuned with local data. 2. Create transparent data-sharing agreements. Develop a framework for using local data to train your models, including benefit-sharing provisions and audit rights for local data providers. Companies that move first will become preferred partners when governments start to mandate these arrangements. 3. Pay fair wages for AI workand let your target markets know you are putting your money where your mouth is. Commit to paying local sustainable living wages plus a mark-up for data annotation and AI training work. Make this commitment public. You will attract better talent, improve the quality of your data, and build brand equity in emerging markets. 4. Launch an open-source initiative in at least one emerging market. Pick a specific challenge in a growth markethealthcare in Nigeria, agriculture in India, education in Indonesiaand commit to building an open-source solution with local developers. The relationships and market intelligence you gain will be worth more than any proprietary advantage you might give up. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/creator-faisalhoque.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/faisal-hoque.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Ready to thrive at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity?","dek":"Faisal Hoques books, podcast, and his companies give leaders the frameworks and platforms to align purpose, people, process, and techturning disruption into meaningful, lasting progress.","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/faisalhoque.com","theme":{"bg":"#02263c","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420512,"imageMobileId":91420514}}
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In 2025, Amazon, Dell, Apple, Google, IBM, Meta, Salesforce, and dozens more have doubled down on demands for employees to return to the office (RTO) at least three days a week, if not all five. And theyre getting exactly what they want. Now, when I say exactly what they want, you might be expecting me to paint a picture of workers happily returning to their daily commutes, overcrowded highways, cavernous or claustrophobic offices, constant interruptions, and extra expenses, and all of it resulting in massive productivity gains. Thats not happening, the productivity-gains part. And the longer we play this out, the sillier the performances of productivity theater have become. The truth is, the science on productivity is still out. So you have to go with your gut. Or your experience. And what 30 years of gut and experience tells me is that the real question isnt whether people are more productive at homeits whether companies can afford to lose their best talent over this. Right now, tech workers are desperate. Companies know it. Thats why Amazon can demand five days in the office and get compliance instead of resignations. But the labor market isnt static; it never was. In fact, it tends to whipsaw back and forth every few years. Remember 2022? Companies were begging people to take jobs. Signing bonuses, remote work, unlimited PTOwhatever it took. Candidates were ghosting interviews. That shoe was totally on the other foot, and it was a Doc Marten. But if we look at history, even recent history, a lot of companies that are mandating RTO now are writing the future resignation letters for their best employees, to be delivered the nanosecond the tech job market stops being the worst in history. Let me tell you how common sense foreshadows a reckoning for RTO. How did we get here? I dont want to defend remote work. I really dont. But Im a huge fan of common sense. Its a little ironic that remote work accelerated with another mandatethat we all stay home for most of 2020 and a lot of 2021. I, for one, still cant believe that happened. But its what happened next that mattered. As the pandemic restrictions lifted almost universally by 2022, the natural calls by employers for their employees to return to the office were met with an unexpected backlash. No, thanks. Were more productive, our work-life balance is much better, we feel better, and anyway you said we could do this. That backlash peaked in 2024, when a bunch of Dell employees, shockingly, chose to take the hit to their company future rather than come back to the office. Thats fine. Wed rather do a better job in a more comfortable environment. By the way, weve moved to New Zealand. Yeah, it got silly. And corporate tech did not take that silliness lying down. Employees needed to return to the office because . . . well, because its always been that way. Does it matter that in a post-pandemic internet business world, that physical proximity no longer matters? That doesnt matter. As employers started stamping their feet over the mandates, I started talking about common sense. For one, the long-term hits these companies were taking to their talent candidate pool, their employee morale, and their productivity when measured from the employees perspective, were costs that were going to far outweigh their sunk real estate costs in the short term. But then corporate tech got smart. Sort of. Employers started making the misguided assumption that the employees who were most dead set against returning to the office were the ones that the company could live without. RTO became a natural, if completely illogical, weeding-out mechanism. And that kinda worked. But kinda didnt. Sure, the troublemakers all found the door and gave the finger on the way out, but the go-along-to-get-along crowd stopped performing and got performative, and the rest of the tech workforce got ready to revolt. Then the employers got bailed out by the worst tech labor market in history. When there are more job seekers than jobs, tech companies can mandate a company loyalty sing-along every morning, and the entire workforce will start warming up their vocal cords. Whats next for the labor market and RTO? Well, what does common sense tell us? Productivity is in the eye of the beholder. In any position where creativity, innovation, or even decision-making matters, Id argue that there is no stable metric for productivity that goes beyond correlation to causation where employee performance is concerned. So you have to go with simple, common-sense concepts. Evolution doesnt come wit introductory pamphlets. There is no title card for the next phase of the future of work. It just happens, and you evolve or die. And if we couldnt connect the dots that the internet had made physical proximity irrelevant in every case where it wasnt mandatory (i.e., surgery, construction, airline pilot), the pandemic lockdowns ironically hammered that point home. As an evolutionary concept, the productivity argument no longer even matters. Its the same productivity argument that was being made when we were deciding whether everyone still had to wear suits and skirts to work. But if that kind of common sense doesnt sway the naysayers, I can make the argument even common-sensier. Yo. 2022. The job market was supposed to have recovered by now. It hasnt, and that has emboldened a lot of employers to lean into their leverage with their supply of scarce and valuable jobs. But the market will recover. When it does, the first questions that are going to need to be answered are: Why am I on a Zoom with the person down the hall? Why can we only hire within a two-hour commute of some of the most expensive real estate in the country? Why am I wearing this three-piece suit with matching fedora and a pocket watch? Im a database administrator. Because when an employee has leverage, questions like that no longer make any sense. And the very same companies demanding RTO now will likely be forced to offer remote work again to compete for scarce, valuable talent. Theyll be right back where they started, while their talent heads to those smart companies that see remote work as an evolutionary concept, and are creating solutions that accommodate both remote and in-office employees. If you are also a fan of common sense, please join my email list and Ill shoot you a quick heads-up when I spout something close to it. Joe Procopio This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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E-Commerce
It’s the digital equivalent of a clogged drain. You boot up your computer, click the Google Chrome icon, and… wait. You wait to type a search term. You wait for the page to load. You wait while your once-speedy gateway to the internet chugs along like a steam engine trying to keep up with a bullet train. The problem: Chrome is a beast a powerful, functional beast, but a beast nonetheless. Over time, it gets bloated, weighed down by all the digital detritus we pile onto it. But don’t despair. You don’t need a new computer, you just need a digital declutter. Here’s how we’re going to put some pep back in your browser’s step. Note that though feature names and their locations may differ slightly, most or all of these fixes work for Chromium-based browsers as well, such as Microsoft Edge. Disable (or remove) unused extensions This is almost always the main culprit. You installed an extension that seemed like a good idea a year agoa coupon clipper, a niche productivity tool, a way to add a trail of sparkles to your cursorand now it’s silently sucking down your RAM like quicksand. Every single extension needs a little slice of your computer’s brain to run, and they add up fast. To access your extensions, do the following: Click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner. Go to More Tools > Extensions. Look at the list. Be brutal. If you don’t use it at least once a week, toggle it off or, better yet, click Remove. You’ll be surprised how many extensions you forgot you even had. Put dormant tabs to sleep You have 37 tabs open right now. One is a work document, one is a recipe you’ll never try, one is a YouTube video you paused three days ago, and three are different iterations of fantasy football research. Every single one of those tabs is demanding resources, even the ones you haven’t looked at in days. Google knows we have this problem, which is why it created the Memory Saver feature. It essentially puts inactive tabs to sleep, freeing up system memory for the tabs you’re actually using. Heres how: Click the three-dot menu and go to Settings. Click Performance in the left sidebar. Make sure Memory Saver is toggled on. You can also designate certain sites to always stay active (like a live chat or your email), so the important stuff stays awake, and the less important stuff gets a well-deserved nap. Clear cache and cookies This is the classic, “have you tried turning it off and on again?” of browser optimization. Your cache stores parts of websites (images, code, etc.) so they load faster the next time. Your cookies store user data. Over time, these piles of tiny files get huge, slow down your browser’s ability to find what it needs, and generally get in the way. Heres how to clear them. Use the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + Del (Windows/ChromeOS) or Command + Shift + Del (Mac). Set the Time range to All time. Make sure Cached images and files is checked. Cookies and other site data is optional: clearing it logs you out of everything, which is annoying, but can help. Click Clear data. It’s a quick blast that clears out the deep recesses of your browser. Do this once a month, and you’ll notice a difference. Check for updates Sometimes, the answer isn’t some clever hack or esoteric settingit’s just making sure you have the newest version. Google is constantly tweaking Chrome to make it run faster and consume less power. If you haven’t closed your browser in a week, you’re probably running on old software. Heres how to check for updates: Click the three-dot menu. Go to Help > About Google Chrome. Chrome will instantly check for and apply any updates. You might be prompted to relaunch. Even if youre not asked to relaunch, do it anyway. A clean relaunch can solve a world of problems.
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