By: Rolla Hassan Ph.D
Executive Summary
The inaugural Global Index on Responsible AI (GIRAI) 2024 reveals a stark reality: the world is failing to keep pace with the responsible governance of artificial intelligence. This comprehensive analysis of 138 countries demonstrates that 67% of nations scored below 25 out of 100 on responsible AI governance, indicating that nearly six billion people live without adequate protection from AI-related risks.
The research uncovers a pronounced correlation between economic development and AI governance capacity, with wealthy nations consistently outperforming their less affluent counterparts. This “AI governance divide” threatens to exacerbate existing global inequalities, creating a world where the benefits and protections of responsible AI are concentrated among economically developed nations.
Introduction: The Imperative for Responsible AI Governance
Artificial intelligence has emerged as one of the most transformative technologies of the 21st century, reshaping industries, governance systems, and social structures worldwide. As AI systems increasingly influence critical decisions in healthcare, criminal justice, financial services, and public administration, the need for comprehensive governance frameworks has evolved from an academic concern to an urgent policy imperative.
Responsible AI encompasses the development, deployment, and oversight of artificial intelligence systems that prioritize ethical considerations, transparency, accountability, and societal benefit. This paradigm extends beyond technical safeguards to encompass comprehensive frameworks that ensure AI technologies serve human welfare while mitigating potential harms.
Despite widespread recognition of responsible AI principles, empirical evidence regarding global implementation has remained limited until now. The Global Index on Responsible AI (GIRAI) 2024 addresses this gap by providing the first systematic, cross-national assessment of responsible AI governance across 138 countries, revealing troubling disparities that demand immediate attention.
Understanding Responsible AI: A Multidimensional Framework
Responsible AI represents a comprehensive approach to artificial intelligence governance that integrates ethical principles with practical implementation strategies. The framework encompasses several critical dimensions that collectively define effective AI governance.
The ethical foundation of responsible AI rests upon fundamental principles of human dignity, beneficence, and justice. These principles require that AI systems respect individual autonomy, promote societal welfare, and ensure equitable treatment across different populations. The operationalization of these principles involves both technical design considerations and institutional oversight mechanisms.
Transparency and explainability constitute essential components of responsible AI governance, particularly in high-stakes applications where AI decisions significantly impact individual rights and opportunities. This dimension requires not only technical approaches to interpretable AI design but also institutional mechanisms for communicating AI system behavior to affected stakeholders.
Accountability mechanisms ensure clear assignment of responsibility for AI system outcomes and establish pathways for redress when AI systems cause harm. Effective accountability requires coordination across multiple stakeholders, including government agencies, private sector organizations, academic institutions, and civil society groups.
Privacy and data protection safeguards address the fundamental rights implications of AI systems that rely on vast quantities of personal information. These protections must encompass both technical measures for data security and legal frameworks for consent and user control.
Methodology: The GIRAI Assessment Framework
The Global Index on Responsible AI employs a rigorous methodology designed to capture the complexity and diversity of national approaches to AI governance. The assessment framework is grounded in internationally recognized standards, including the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI and the OECD AI Principles, ensuring both legitimacy and comparability across diverse national contexts.
The GIRAI utilizes a three-pillar assessment structure that recognizes the multi-stakeholder nature of effective AI governance. The Government Frameworks pillar evaluates formal legal and policy architecture, including national AI strategies, specific legislation, and regulatory frameworks. The Government Actions pillar assesses concrete governmental initiatives that advance responsible AI governance, capturing the dynamic and experimental aspects of AI policy development. The Non-State Actors pillar examines contributions from universities, civil society organizations, and private sector entities, recognizing that AI governance extends beyond government action.
The assessment encompasses nineteen thematic areas ranging from data protection and human rights to AI safety and labor protections. Each thematic area is evaluated across all three pillars, creating a comprehensive matrix that provides detailed insights into national strengths and weaknesses.
Data collection relies on a network of 138 in-country researchers who administered a comprehensive expert survey comprising over 1,800 questions. This distributed approach ensures local knowledge and cultural understanding while maintaining consistency and quality through rigorous validation procedures.
Key Findings: A World Divided
The GIRAI results reveal profound disparities in responsible AI governance performance that reflect broader patterns of global inequality. The distribution of scores is highly skewed, with 67% of countries scoring below 25 out of 100 and an additional 25% scoring between 25 and 50. This means that approximately 92% of countries have not achieved adequate levels of responsible AI governance according to international standards.
Regional Performance Patterns
European countries demonstrate the strongest overall performance, with the Netherlands leading globally at 86.16, followed by Germany (82.77) and Ireland (74.98). This European dominance reflects the region’s proactive approach to technology regulation, exemplified by the GDPR and the proposed AI Act, as well as strong institutional capacity and coordinated regional frameworks.
North American countries, including the United States (72.81) and Canada (57.39), also perform strongly, though with more variation in their approaches. The United States shows particular strength in non-state actor engagement, reflecting significant private sector and academic involvement in AI governance.
Asian countries present diverse patterns, with developed economies like Japan (52.21), Singapore (53.77), and South Korea performing well, while developing nations show varied results. This diversity reflects different stages of economic development and varying approaches to technology governance across the region.
African countries generally cluster in lower performance ranges, with few exceptions achieving scores above the global median. This pattern reflects broader institutional capacity constraints and resource limitations that affect many African nations’ ability to develop comprehensive AI governance frameworks.
The Economic Development Correlation
To better understand the structural factors influencing AI governance capacity, Telecom Analysis conducted an original statistical analysis examining the relationship between economic development and GIRAI performance across all 138 countries in the index.
This analysis reveals one of the most significant findings: a strong positive correlation between GDP per capita and GIRAI performance, with an R-squared value of 0.5656. This indicates that approximately 56.56% of the variation in AI governance performance can be explained by differences in national economic development levels.
The linear relationship, expressed as y = 770.45x + 584.16, demonstrates that each one-point increase in GIRAI score is associated with an increase of approximately $770 in GDP per capita. This correlation, identified through Telecom Analysis’s independent research, suggests fundamental structural relationships between the factors that drive economic prosperity and those that enable effective AI governance.
Policy Recommendations and Pathways Forward
Addressing the AI governance divide requires coordinated action across multiple levels, from individual country capacity building to global governance initiatives.
Domestic Strategies for Developing Countries
Countries seeking to improve AI governance performance despite resource constraints can learn from positive outliers. Developing foundational digital governance capabilities—including data protection frameworks, cybersecurity policies, and digital rights protections—provides essential infrastructure for AI-specific governance.
Regional cooperation can help countries pool resources and expertise to develop more effective frameworks. Regional organizations can facilitate knowledge sharing, coordinate policy development, and create economies of scale that make sophisticated AI governance more feasible for individual countries.
Active engagement with international AI governance initiatives enables access to technical expertise and best practices while ensuring that global standards reflect diverse perspectives and needs.
International Cooperation Imperatives
The AI governance divide cannot be addressed through domestic policy alone; it requires sustained international cooperation and capacity-building efforts. International development agencies should recognize AI governance as a critical component of digital development and incorporate it into programming and funding priorities.
Technical assistance programs focused on AI governance could help address expertise gaps contributing to performance disparities. These might include training for government officials, support for academic research, and assistance with institutional development.
Multilateral organizations should facilitate AI governance cooperation and knowledge sharing, providing platforms for developing countries to influence global discussions and ensure their perspectives are represented in international standards.
Conclusion: Toward Equitable AI Governance
The Global Index on Responsible AI reveals a sobering reality about the current state of AI governance worldwide. The pronounced disparities in performance and strong correlation with economic development demonstrate that the benefits and protections of responsible AI are currently concentrated among the world’s wealthiest nations.
This finding has profound implications for global development, international relations, and the future of artificial intelligence. If current trends continue, the world risks emergence of new forms of digital divide that determine not just access to AI technologies, but protection from their risks and influence over their development.
However, the analysis also reveals reasons for optimism. Positive outliers demonstrate that strategic policy choices and institutional innovation can help countries overcome resource constraints. The important role of non-state actors provides additional pathways for building governance capacity through civil society engagement and international cooperation.
The path forward requires recognition that AI governance is not merely a technical challenge, but a fundamental question of global equity and justice. Addressing the disparities revealed by the GIRAI will require sustained commitment to international cooperation, capacity building, and development of governance approaches accessible across diverse contexts and resource levels.
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly central to economic development and human welfare, the importance of effective AI governance will only grow. The choices made in coming years will determine whether AI becomes a force for global convergence and shared prosperity, or a new source of division echoing the worst aspects of previous technological revolutions.
The GIRAI provides an essential baseline for measuring progress toward more equitable AI governance. Future research and policy development must build upon these findings to create a world where responsible AI benefits all nations and populations, not just the economically privileged few.
About This Analysis: This research was conducted using data from the Global Index on Responsible AI (GIRAI) 2024 and World Bank economic indicators. The analysis employs statistical correlation analysis and comparative case study examination to identify patterns and implications in global AI governance performance.
Telecom Analysis 
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