International Day of Science, Technology, and Innovation for the South

Excellencies, Distinguished delegates, 1. The Group of 77 and China has the honour to convene this Special Event on the International Day of Science, Technology and Innovation for the South. This day, proclaimed by the General Assembly in resolution 78/259, is both a commemoration and a call to action. It highlights the centrality of science, technology, and innovation (STI) in tackling the multidimensional crises facing humanity and in advancing the development priorities of the Global South. The Group recalls in particular the Havana Summit of 2023, where our Heads of State and Government underscored the indispensable role of STI for economic diversification, competitiveness, resilience, and sustainable development. The Havana Final Declaration not only reiterated the Group's historical and principled positions, but also mandated concrete actions, including the convening of a High-Level Meeting on STI for Development during the 80th Session of the General Assembly. 2. The global...

  History shows that technological shifts generally begin with upgrades in hardware and infrastructure, for example, from mainframes to personal computers, from landlines to mobile devices and from intranets to the Internet. This enables additional capabilities, including software and services, and facilitates the adoption and further development of technologies. The different phases are not linear; they usually overlap and create feedback loops that take years to mature and for society to realize their full potential. Currently, the diffusion of AI applications is associated with investment to upgrade critical AI infrastructure components such as semiconductors, data centres and supercomputers. These support high-speed processing, significant data-handling and advanced computation. During a gold rush, the most likely winners are often those who sell shovels. In the AI boom, one of the main winners has been Nvidia, the world’s largest semiconductor company. In 2023, based on hig...

The concept of the fifth industrial revolution is still evolving, but it can be distinguished from the fourth industrial revolution by three key features, namely, human–machine collaboration , sustainability and personalization . These elements point to a future that can be more inclusive and sustainable, but achieving this vision requires deliberate effort and action.  • Human–machine collaboration – As opposed to the automation focus of the fourth industrial revolution , it focuses on human–machine collaboration, or human-centric co-creation . This involves redirecting technological advances towards serving humanity, prioritizing collaboration and co-creation between humans and machines. Rather than focusing solely on efficiency it aims to promote dynamic and inclusive production systems that enhance human well-being. Rather than asking which new technological solution is feasible, the question should be why such a solution is being developed; what human and societal needs ...

  Compared with earlier AI waves, the current AI surge has greater depth and breadth of penetration, with AI technology having a wide range of potential applications in different fields. AI is already embedded in our daily life and serves as a general-purpose technology that augments other technologies. The intersection of AI with other frontier technologies opens up opportunities for innovation, including the following (figure I.11). IoT – Connected devices, given a further boost by AI , can analyse data, make decisions and take actions with minimal human intervention, to create an artificial intelligence of things. This is becoming the basis of smart factories . Combined with the 5G Technology networks that support higher-speed connections with lower latency, this can lead to intelligent connectivity . Smart transportation , for example, enables vehicles to communicate in real time on road conditions and accidents, for better traffic control and management.  Big data ...

  To help in understanding the promises and perils of AI, the following sections discuss different waves of AI and the intersection of AI with other technologies . There is no universal definition of AI , but it is generally considered to be the capability of a machine to engage in cognitive activities similar to those performed by the human brain, such as reasoning, learning and problem-solving. The notion originated in the 1940s as part of the concept of machine intelligence by Alan Turing, who suggested that machines could simulate both mathematical deduction and formal reasoning. The term artificial intelligence was coined in 1956 for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. Since then, progress has been uneven and can be considered to have taken place in three waves (figure I.8).  The first was in the 1950s and the 1960s, when AI developed rapidly as a rule-based system that used a set of predetermined “rules of choices” to make decisions and ...

General-purpose technologies lead to new methods of production and innovation, transform industries and create new markets over decades. Such technologies are characterized by:  • Pervasiveness – They offer applications across various industries and economic activities.  • Dynamicity – They offer room for continuous technical improvements that create new opportunities for applications.  • Innovational complementarities – They enable innovations in application sectors and new complementary technologies developed around them.  AI is considered a general-purpose technology because it can impact a wide range of tasks and jobs. AI is continuously evolving, with growing functionality, and may affect around half of human jobs in the future. Moreover, AI is already transforming the way research and innovation are conducted. While it can speed up processes, it is unclear whether the use of AI can help address the increasing difficulties in discovering new ideas and the ...

  Knowledge creation in frontier technologies has been gathering pace, with a rapid rise in research publications and patents. Over the period 2000–2023, for AI alone, more than 713,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles were published and 338,000 patents were filed, with a sharp increase since 2020. Other industry 4.0 technologies , such as IoT , robotics and big data , also generated a large number of publications and patents. Among green technologies , knowledge creation was more significant in biogas and biomass (274,000 patents) and in electric vehicles (243,000 patents) (figure I.6).  As with R&D investments, knowledge creation in frontier technologies is dominated by China and the United States, which together are responsible for around one third of global peer-reviewed articles and two thirds of patents. These countries are more dominant in patents than scientific articles. Different countries often specialize in particular fields. This is evident in the reveale...

  The potential of frontier technologies has attracted significant research and development investments. For example, between 2022 and 2025, AI related investment was expected to double to $200 billion. By comparison, this is about three times the global spending on climate change adaptation. By 2030, AI-related investment could represent 2 per cent of GDP in countries leading in AI . While many companies undertake various forms of R&D, the bulk of investment is by a small number of enterprises. In 2022, more than 80 per cent of business-funded R&D worldwide was carried out by 2,500 companies, which invested €1.25 trillion; 40 per cent of such investment was by only 100 companies. Among the largest 100 corporate R&D investors , around half are headquartered in the United States, led by Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Apple. Around 13 per cent are headquartered in China, led by Huawei and Tencent, up from 2 per cent 10 years ago a...

  Frontier technologies are those advanced and emerging technologies – from AI to green hydrogen and gene editing – that have strong transformative potential and offer new opportunities for economic development, sustainability and governance . These technologies help solve complex problems, allow time-consuming undertakings to be carried out more efficiently and offer potential for scalability and fast diffusion.  In this way, frontier technologies play a key role in creating and implementing global solutions to address the challenges of the twenty-first century. This section provides an update of the status of 17 frontier technologies presented in the previous edition of the Technology and Innovation Report . As in that report, they can be divided into three broad categories: industry 4.0 , green and renewable energy technologies and other frontier technologies (figure I.1). One measure by which to assess frontier technologies is their market size, namely, the total re...