Joint business statement calls for enabling policy frameworks to accelerate inclusive AI adoption

The joint business statement:

Inclusive adoption of AI is essential to ensuring that the technology delivers on its potential to drive economic growth, shared prosperity and sustainable development. But access to technology alone is not enough. Realising this potential depends on strong foundations in infrastructure, skills, governance, innovation and access to high-quality digital resources, including data.

Business is investing and partnering to expand access and support responsible deployment, but scaling inclusive impact will require supportive policy conditions that enable coordinated action to close infrastructure and skills gaps, support the deployment of secure, resilient, high-capacity broadband and fibre networks, expand access to compute, support the development of high-quality data ecosystems, advance AI trust and safety, and establish interoperable, innovation-friendly governance frameworks so that people, businesses and communities everywhere can benefit from the AI economy.

Accelerating inclusive AI adoption

Inclusive AI adoption is essential to ensuring that the benefits of AI contribute to sustainable development, economic growth and shared prosperity.

Achieving this objective requires more than just access to AI technologies. It depends on a broader ecosystem of infrastructure, skills, high-quality data, governance and innovation, as well as ensuring that AI systems are designed and deployed in ways that reflect human-centered design and end-user needs as well as enable effective use in real-world contexts without placing undue technical or operational burdens on the individuals, businesses and public institutions expected to adopt them. Unlike previous technological revolutions, AI’s broad accessibility creates the potential for individuals, businesses, and communities everywhere to participate in and benefit from it.  Realising this potential, however, depends on putting the right enabling conditions in place.  

Businesses across sectors and regions are investing, innovating, and partnering to expand access to AI capabilities, support responsible deployment and use, and help ensure that countries at all levels of development can participate in and benefit from the AI economy.

Through these efforts, business works to:

• Expand digital infrastructure, connectivity (including broadband and fibre networks), cloud services and computing capacity;
• Invest in workforce training, AI literacy and skills development;
• Support small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups in adopting and deploying AI;
• Develop locally relevant and multilingual AI applications;
• Advance good practices, standards and governance approaches that support trust and confidence in AI; and
• Partner with governments, academia and civil society to expand access to AI capabilities and expertise.

These efforts are helping to create the conditions for broader participation in the AI economy, enabling businesses of all sizes, workers, researchers, public institutions and local innovators to use AI to improve productivity, deliver new services and address local development challenges.

However, realising the full potential of AI will require coordinated action to strengthen the key enablers of adoption.

Business, therefore, calls on governments to focus on the following priorities:

1. Invest in the foundations of AI adoption

Resilient and expanded sustainable energy systems, connectivity (including broadband and fibre networks), data centres and cloud infrastructure are fundamental prerequisites for meaningful participation in the AI economy. Closing infrastructure gaps, particularly in developing and least developed countries, should be a priority for both public investment and public-private partnerships.

2. Support the development of high-quality data ecosystems and expand access to compute resources

Access to high-quality data and computing resources is essential for innovation. Governments can support the development of high-quality data ecosystems, facilitate access to public datasets where appropriate and promote governance frameworks that enable cross-border data flows and responsible data use while protecting privacy, security and intellectual property.

3. Prioritise skills and capacity-building

AI adoption ultimately depends on people. Governments should work with business, educational institutions and other stakeholders to strengthen AI accessibility and literacy, digital skills, technical training, skilled trades training and workforce development programmes so that all individuals and organisations can benefit from and use AI effectively and responsibly.

4. Strengthen local innovation ecosystems

Enabling local innovation is critical to ensuring that AI delivers benefits across diverse sectors and communities. Policies should support start-ups, SMEs, researchers and entrepreneurs in developing and accessing AI solutions that respond to local needs, languages and economic priorities.

5. Promote enabling and interoperable policy frameworks

AI governance frameworks should be risk-based, proportionate, technology-neutral and sufficiently flexible to evolve alongside technological progress. Where specific obligations apply, they should attach to the actors best placed to identify and manage a given risk, with responsibility and liability distributed across the AI value chain to reflect each participant’s role and ability to mitigate it. Policymakers should commit to long-term AI strategies, seek to avoid policy fragmentation and support interoperability through international cooperation, market-driven standards and cross-border collaboration. Building on existing international frameworks and standards, such approaches can help build trust while enabling innovation and wider adoption.

6. Advance trust and safety

Trust and safety are essential to ensuring AI is adopted widely and used with confidence. Governments should work with business, researchers and experts to align on safety evaluation and testing methods, interoperability, transparency and disclosure practices, mechanisms for user redress, and shared approaches to mitigating potential risks and harms, so that safeguards keep pace with the technology and people adopt AI with confidence in its benefits.

7. Deepen public-private collaboration

Public-private partnerships should be at the centre of efforts to accelerate inclusive AI adoption.Business brings expertise, infrastructure, technical capabilities, investment and implementation experience that can complement public policy objectives and help scale impact.

The question is no longer whether AI can contribute to development and economic growth. The priority is to ensure that the enabling conditions exist for businesses and communities everywhere to access, adopt and benefit from AI.

Inclusive AI adoption will not happen automatically. At its best, the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance can bring to light efforts succeeding in building the foundational layers of AI, identify the key barriers to expanding digital infrastructure and accessing digital resources and compute, and highlight effective approaches to capacity-building and coordination, helping to connect policy ambition with practical implementation.

This can be grounded in practical, real-world examples that inform and motivate action across governments, business and civil society. In doing so, the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance can also contribute to a clearer understanding of how AI is diffusing across national economies, helping to determine which approaches are delivering meaningful progress, and where gaps or divergences persist across contexts.

Business stands ready to continue investing, innovating, and partnering with governments and other stakeholders worldwide to accelerate inclusive AI adoption at scale. We encourage the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance to continue shaping a pragmatic, implementation-focused contribution to the broader AI governance landscape, so that the benefits of AI can reach people, businesses, and communities everywhere.