United Nations
Empowering people to make artificial intelligence work for human development
As artificial intelligence (AI) races ahead this chapter turns the focus to people—not just to those who build AI but to how people everywhere can use it to improve their lives.
Foreword
Artificial intelligence (AI) is racing ahead at lightning speed. Yet as AI surges forward human development stalls.
Reimagining choices: Towards artificial intelligence–augmented human development
Seizing the opportunities of AI demands more than technological innovation. Bridging micro- and macrolevel evidence this chapter proposes an actionable framework for artificial intelligence (AI)–augmented human development that is robust to fast-paced technological change.
Power, influence and choice in the algorithmic age
Much of this Report focuses on the demand side of artificial intelligence (AI).
Artificial intelligence across life stages: Insights from a people-centred perspective
People at each life stage use artificial intelligence (AI) with varying frequency and for different purposes influenced largely by the institutions they are embedded in.
Overview
Artificial intelligence (AI) has broken into a dizzying gallop. Each day seems to herald some new AI-powered algorithmic wonder.
From tools to agents: Rewiring artificial intelligence to promote human development
To artificial intelligence (AI) decisions are merely tasks to automate. Yet to humans choice is the currency of agency and the affordance of freedom.
Acknowledgements
Every Human Development Report is a voyage of discovery exploring how the human development approach helps navigate pressing challenges and emerging opportunities.
Framing narratives to reimagine artificial intelligence to advance human development
As the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on human development remains uncertain narratives can play a crucial role in shaping our choices.
Human Development Report 2025
A Matter of Choice: People and Possibilities in the Age of AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has broken into a dizzying gallop. While AI feats grab headlines they privilege technology in a make-believe vacuum obscuring what really matters: people’s choices. The choices that people have and can realize within ever expanding freedoms are essential to human development whose goal is for people to live lives they value and have reason to value. A world with AI is flush with choices the exercise of which is both a matter of human development and a means to advance it. Going forward development depends less on what AI can do—not on how human-like it is perceived to be—and more on mobilizing people’s imaginations to reshape economies and societies to make the most of it. Instead of trying vainly to predict what will happen this year’s Human Development Report asks what choices can be made so that new development pathways for all countries dot the horizon helping everyone have a shot at thriving in a world with AI.
Readers guide
The tables provide an overview of key aspects of human development. The seven tables contain the family of composite human development indices and their components estimated by the Human Development Report Office (HDRO).
Priorities and needs in, and uptake of, adaptation technologies in agriculture, water resources and coastal zones
Adaptation planning is a key mechanism through which national governments – as well as governments at other levels and non-state actors – identify technology-related needs and priorities.
Executive summary
Many adaptation technologies have existed and been deployed for many generations such as building houses on stilts to cope with flooding or irrigating crops to cope with erratic precipitation.