Artificial intelligence is redrawing the global map of power, opportunity and inequality. This is the central concern of the 2025 Human Development Report, which argues that the real question is no longer whether AI will shape the future, but who it will serve and who it will leave behind. It treats AI not as a futuristic abstraction but as a political, economic and moral fault line running through the heart of global development.

For India, the policy choices we make today will define our role in the decades to come, whether we rise as a sovereign innovator or remain a subservient user in the evolving architecture of digital power. The report discusses how despite technological breakthroughs,the rate of human progress is the slowest it’s been since the report began 35 years ago. Gains in life expectancy, education and income have plateaued and in some regions, reversed. Pre 2020 trends suggested that the global HDI would surpass 0.8, achieving “very high” status by 2030.

However, current projections based on the 2021-2024 trajectory push back this milestone by several decades. In the wake of overlapping crises of the pandemic, the climate crisis, and conflict, the gap between very high and low HDI........

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