The rapid advancement of AI has a highly differentiated impact on different economies. For economies that occupy the lower-end of the technology chain and rely on large-scale labour as their engine, this impact first manifests as economic urgency.
Take parts of Southeast Asia as an example. Their past competitiveness did not come from technological advantage. It came from the scale and cost advantage of their labour force. This is a development path that compensates for efficiency through quantity. As AI increasingly replaces standardised intellectual and manual labour, the sustainability of this path is being fundamentally shaken.
For economies that do not fully price labour according to market forces, but instead maintain social structure by grading work through institutions and ideology, the challenge posed by AI is even more complex. It is not just an economic issue. It also involves social structure and ethical dilemmas. When large numbers of traditional jobs are replaced by AI, both theoriginal social stratification mechanism and the value distribution system face restructuring.
The impact of AI on the economy and society is not evenly distributed. Who benefits, who loses, and how they are affected depends on the structural characteristics of each economy. Understanding this non-uniform distribution is far more useful than simply judging whether AI is good or bad.