AI Readiness Is a Public Good, Not a Product

The easiest part of artificial-intelligence adoption is often obtaining access. A staff member opens an account, a provider demonstrates a fluent assistant, a board approves a pilot and an institution can say that it is using AI. None of those actions establishes readiness.

Readiness is the capacity to use a technology for a legitimate purpose, under real local conditions, without abandoning the people, knowledge, duties and alternatives on which the institution depends. It includes electricity and connectivity, but it also includes competent educators, defensible assessment, protected data, accountable authority, affordable continuity, evidence of benefit and a route for correction when the system is wrong.

AI readiness is a public good, not a product. It must be built across the institution and judged by the quality, fairness and resilience of the service people actually receive.

On 16 October, Reuters reported that International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva warned that AI's risks could exceed its opportunities without adequate safeguards and an ethical foundation. Speaking during the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok, she identified digital infrastructure, electricity and appropriate regulation as preconditions for broadly shared benefit. Reuters

The official IMF programme confirms that the discussion addressed productivity, labour markets, financial stability, resilience, skills and the distribution of AI's gains. It brought together public officials, a technology-company leader and business representatives; it was a policy…