New Delhi, Feb. 19 -- Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith on Thursday said artificial intelligence (AI) will play a decisive role in shaping the global economic balance, particularly between the Global North and South.

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Smith said, "I think the best way to think about AI is to look at it more broadly and think about the state of the world we live. We live in a tumultuous and a fragmented world but I think in so many ways the deepest emotion during divide has been the economic divide between global north and south."

"This economic divide is a result more than anything else the technological divide," he added.

The technology divide, he said, among others, is created by unequal access ...