This week India hosted a massive AI Impact Summit in Delhi, drawing tens of thousands to discuss the future of technology and the Global South's digital moment. Despite negative media attention it was indeed a mega event. Last week Pakistan held its own Indus AI Summit in Islamabad, announcing a $1 billion commitment to artificial intelligence by 2030 and plans to position the country as a serious digital player. On both counts it is indeed a late start. The hierarchy of the global AI elite has already been created. If you are not at the table you are most likely on the menu.

I do not know what concrete ideas were discussed behind those closed doors because, despite two decades of my work and active interest in tech journalism and years of writing on AI before it became fashionable, I was not invited.

That is fine. The existential questions about our AI future are not being settled on summit stages. They are unfolding in real time elsewhere. While regional leaders focus on optics and adoption, a harder question looms. Are we preparing to become a data harvester's colony for a system that may no longer need our people?

I warned that Hollywood and journalism were becoming titles-only affairs. The disruption would not be chatbots writing mediocre content, but entire creative pipelines collapsing. The movie industry would discover its redundancy before it admitted it.

On 17 February, the proof of concept arrived. German studio Dor Brothers released a three-minute sci-fi short indistinguishable from a $200 million Hollywood production. It was created entirely with AI on their DorLabs platform. No cameras, no actors, no physical sets, no traditional VFX teams. Concept to final cut in roughly 24 hours.

At the same time, the BBC reported on ByteDance's Seedance 2.0, a........

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