Don’t focus on the AI race, says former UK PM Rishi Sunak in conversation with Microsoft’s Satya Nadella

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the real divide in artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is not between the global north and the global south, but between countries that show strong leadership and those that don’t.

He pointed to the UAE as an example of how decisive government action can accelerate AI diffusion.

In a conversation with former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the World Economic Forum in Davos, moderated by Dan Roth, editor-in-chief of LinkedIn, Nadella said AI diffusion will ultimately determine who benefits most from the technology and that diffusion can happen anywhere with the right leadership and commitment.


“More than a comparison between the global north and global south, I think it’s the leadership,” Nadella said. “What the UAE showed was top-down leadership and bottom-up adoption. And that can happen at any firm, in every sector.”

Sunak: Don’t look at AI as a race to be won

Rishi Sunak urged governments to move away from framing AI as a race to be won; instead, the focus should be on rapid adoption for citizens.

“Don’t focus on the AI race,” Sunak said. “Be the one who’s going to adopt and diffuse this technology across your citizens as fast as possible because that’s what will actually transform their lives.”

Sunak warned that a lack of urgency among political leaders could hold countries back at a critical moment. “What’s stepping back is government leaders understanding the importance of this moment and then rising to it,” he said, adding that urgency at the government level is essential.

‘AI diffusion ultimately wins’

Nadella stressed that history shows general-purpose technologies create real value only when they are widely adopted and embedded across the economy.

In AI’s case, that means governments and companies working together to build the necessary infrastructure from energy to data centres and enabling businesses and citizens to actually use the technology.

“By and large, energy is a state subject,” he said, noting that without reliable grids and power generation, it becomes difficult to build data centres. “If you don’t have a data centre, you can’t produce tokens. Diffusion ultimately wins.”

While Nadella said there is a chance AI adoption could become more evenly distributed across regions, he warned it is also likely to unfold in an “idiosyncratic” way, shaped by local policy choices and leadership priorities.

Trust gap with AI

Sunak further pointed to a growing trust gap around AI between developed economies and the global south. According to him, public optimism about AI is significantly higher in countries such as India and China than in the UK, the US or Europe.

“Citizens in India and China are super excited,” Sunak said. “They trust AI, and they’re positive about what it can do for them. You ask the same question in the UK, the US, and Europe, they’re probably about half as trusting. That is a challenge.”

This trust deficit, he said, could slow adoption in advanced economies even as emerging markets move faster.

Nadella proposes a fresh theory

Nadella further argued that AI represents a fundamental shift in how humans interact with knowledge. “We do need a new theory of the mind for navigating this shift,” he said, describing a move from “information at the fingertips” to becoming “managers of infinite minds.”

He also cautioned that some skilling programmes at the workplace fail because they try to predict the future without fast feedback loops, making them ineffective in a rapidly changing AI landscape.