Setting the Scene: A Double-Edged Sword

Third-world nations have long relied on industries of sweatshops — textiles in Bangladesh, call centres in the Philippines, or manufacturing in Vietnam — as stepping stones to wealth. Such workaday employment is not glamorous, but it pays millions of individuals secure incomes, mobility, and respect.

Enter artificial intelligence automation: robots in the assembly plant, customer service agents replaced by chatbots, AI accounting software for bookkeeping, logistics, and even diagnosing medical conditions. To developing countries, this is a threat and an opportunity.

 The Threat: Disruption of Existing Jobs

• Manufacturing Jobs in Jeopardy
  Asian or African plants became a magnet for global firms because of low labor. But if devices can assemble things better in the U.S. or Europe, why offshoring? This would be counter to the cost benefit of low-wage nations.
• Service Sector Vulnerability
  Customer service, data entry, and even accounting or legal work are already being automated. Countries like India or the Philippines, which built huge outsourcing industries, may see jobs vanish.
• Widening Inequality
  Least likely to retain their jobs are low-skilled workers. Unless retrained, this could exacerbate inequality in developing nations — a few technology elites thrive, while millions of low-skilled workers are left behind.

 The Opportunity: Leapfrogging with AI

But here’s the other side. Just like some developing nations skipped landlines and went directly to mobile phones, AI can help them skip industrial development phases.

• Empowering Small Businesses
  Translation, design, accounting, marketing AI tools are now free or even on a shoestring budget. This levels the playing field for small entrepreneurs — a Kenyan tailor, an Indian farmer.
• Agriculture Revolution
  In the majority of developing nations, farming continues to be the primary source of employment. Weather forecasting AI-based technology, soil analysis, and logistics supply chains could make farmers more efficient, boost yields, and reduce waste.
• New Industries Forming
  As AI continues to grow, entirely new industries — from drone delivery to telemedicine — could create new jobs that have yet to be invented, providing opportunity for young professionals in developing nations to create rather than merely imitate.

The Human Side: Choices That Matter

• Governments must decide: Do they invest in reskilling workers, or stick with dying industries?
• Businesses must decide: Do they automate just for cost savings, or build models that still have human work where it is necessary?
• Workers have no promise: Some will be forced to shift from monotonous work to work that demands imagination, problem-solving, and human connection — sectors that AI is still not able to crack.

The shift won’t come easily. A factory worker in Dhaka who loses his job to a robot isn’t going to become a software engineer overnight. The gap between displacement and opportunity is where most societies will find it hardest.

Looking Ahead

AI-driven automation in developing economies will not be a simple story of job loss. Instead, it will:

• Kill some jobs (especially low-skill, repetitive ones),
• Transform others (farming, medicine, logistics), and
• Create new ones (digital services, local innovation, AI maintenance).

The question is if developing nations will adopt the forward-looking approach of embracing AI as a growth accelerator, or get caught in the painful stage of disruption without building cushions of protection.

 Bottom Line

AI is not destiny. It’s a tool. For the developing world, it might undermine decades of effort by wiping out history industries, or it could bring a new path to prosperity by empowering workers, entrepreneurs, and communities to surge ahead.

The decision is in the hands of policy, education, and leadership — but foremost, whether societies consider AI as a replacement for humans or an addition to humans.