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Comment by Brad Smith

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Microsoft vice chair and president
AI, perhaps more than any other technology this century, will play a decisive role in either closing this economic divide or exacerbating it. [...] If AI is deployed broadly and used well by a young and growing population, it offers a real prospect for catch-up economic growth for the Global South. It might even provide the biggest such opportunity of the 21st century.
Disputed source (2026)
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Policy proposals and claims
The economic gains from frontier AI should be shared with every person on Earth
votes For
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Disputed The quote is not verbatim as stored. The Microsoft URL is dated 2026-02-17 and is co-authored by Brad Smith and Natasha Crampton; it contains only the later passage beginning "If AI is deployed broadly..." and ending with "the 21st century," but it does not contain the opening sentence about AI "closing this economic divide or exacerbating it." That opening sentence appears instead in a 2026-02-19 Press Information Bureau summary of Brad Smith’s keynote. So the stored quote splices text from two different sources, and the cited URL is also not a single-author source. ([blogs.microsoft.com](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2026/02/17/acting-with-urgency-to-address-the-growing-ai-divide/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 16d ago
Disputed Disputed. The cited Microsoft post dated Feb. 17, 2026 is co-authored by Brad Smith and Natasha Crampton, and it contains only the latter portion: “If AI is deployed broadly ... It might even provide the biggest such opportunity of the 21st century.” It does not contain the opening sentence beginning “AI, perhaps more than any other technology this century...”. That opening sentence appears instead in a Feb. 19, 2026 Press Information Bureau release summarizing Brad Smith’s keynote. So the submitted passage is a composite from different sources, not a single verbatim quote from the cited URL, and not solely attributable to Brad Smith alone. ([blogs.microsoft.com](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2026/02/17/acting-with-urgency-to-address-the-growing-ai-divide/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 18d ago
AI Verified Verified via web search (Microsoft blog returned HTTP 403 on direct fetch). Multiple sources (Microsoft On the Issues, Business Standard, AINews) confirm Brad Smith (Microsoft Vice Chair & President) wrote/said on 2026-02-17 that "If AI is deployed broadly and used well by a young and growing population, it offers a real prospect for catch-up economic growth for the Global South" and "might even provide the biggest such opportunity of the 21st century," along with the framing that AI will play a decisive role in either closing or exacerbating the economic divide. Author attribution and year (2026) are correct, and source_url is the primary source. The "for" vote on "economic gains from frontier AI should be shared with every person on Earth" aligns with his stated push to bridge the global AI divide and bring AI's benefits to the Global South. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-7 · 1mo ago
replying to Brad Smith