Artificial intelligence is spreading across workplaces, public services and decision-making systems, but women remain underrepresented widening the gender gap, in the workforce building and governing the technology. Men hold nearly eight in 10 AI jobs and almost nine in 10 senior leadership positions shaping the technology, according to UN Women. The figures were released as the agency launched its Digital, Innovation and AI Hub during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The imbalance extends beyond employment. A global analysis of 133 AI systems found that 44 per cent showed gender bias, according to UN Women. The finding raises concerns about how systems developed with incomplete representation may perform when used across populations with different experiences and needs.

Women are also facing risks from AI-generated and AI-assisted abuse. A UN Women survey of women human rights defenders, activists and journalists found that nearly one in four respondents had experienced AI-assisted online violence. The survey covered 641 women across 119 countries.

AI-generated images, manipulated content and deepfakes have added new tools to online harassment. For women whose work places them in the public sphere, the effects can extend beyond social media.

Gender Gap: Women Remain a Minority in AI

The gender imbalance starts well before senior leadership. Women accounted for about 30 per cent of people working in AI in 2024, according to data cited by UN Women from the World Economic Forum. Women are also underrepresented in STEM education and careers in many parts of the world. This limits the number of women entering the teams that develop AI systems, conduct research, build datasets and make decisions about how the technology is deployed.

The problem is not restricted to technical roles. AI increasingly affects recruitment, healthcare, education, financial services and public administration. Decisions about the use of these systems can therefore affect people who have no role in developing them. Bias can enter at several stages, including through training data, system design, testing and deployment. Underrepresentation in datasets can also leave certain experiences poorly reflected in the resulting systems.

UN Women has called for engineers, social scientists, human-rights specialists and gender experts to be involved in technology development and oversight. The issue becomes particularly important when AI is used for decisions involving access to jobs, services or other opportunities.

AI Used in Online Violence

The technology has created additional ways to target women in public life. Among the 641 women surveyed by UN Women, nearly a quarter reported experiencing violence assisted by AI. The respondents included journalists, activists and human rights defenders working across 119 countries.

AI can be used to produce or manipulate images, videos and other material used for harassment. Such attacks can damage professional reputations and discourage women from participating in public debate. Research cited by UN Women found that the share of women journalists reporting that online violence had spilled into the physical world increased from 20 per cent in 2020 to 42 per cent in 2025.

The Access Gap Starts Earlier

The shortage of women in AI is connected to unequal access to digital technologies and STEM education. Women in low-income countries continue to have lower internet access than men, according to UN Women. Differences in access to digital tools and skills can affect who enters technology-related education and employment.

There is also an economic cost to the divide. The UN Women–UN DESA Gender Snapshot 2025 estimated that closing the global gender digital divide could generate $1.5 trillion in additional global GDP by 2030.

The same analysis estimated that closing the divide could benefit 343.5 million women and girls and help lift 30 million women out of poverty by 2050.

UN Women Launches AI and Digital Policy Hub

UN Women has launched the Digital, Innovation and AI Hub to address these gaps. The hub will bring together researchers, governments, technology companies, AI specialists and women’s rights organisations. Its work will include studying how emerging technologies affect women and girls and supporting governments in developing gender-responsive digital and AI policies.

It will also work with technology companies on incorporating gender equality into the design and governance of AI systems.
At the UN General Assembly, the issue sits within a wider debate over AI’s role in employment, economic development, public services, warfare and international security.

For women, the issue extends from access to AI-related jobs to participation in decisions about how the technology is built, regulated and used.

A digital holiday can offer a practical pause from screens and constant connectivity. From children to working professionals, taking regular time offline can help rebuild attention, creativity, relationships and a healthier balance with technology. A digital detox can help children and adults reduce screen dependence, reconnect with nature and relationships, and create space for reflection and creativity.

Imagine a day without digital devices. Those of us who grew up in the 1990s remember the shift firsthand — from writing letters with ink pens to typing messages on social media and making video calls. Artificial intelligence and rapid technological change now touch nearly every part of daily life, and an internet-first era has drawn humanity into a globally connected network. We ask AI chatbots for advice on everything from recipes to relationships. Yet the love of books and literature hasn’t disappeared — it has simply changed form. Audiobook platforms have grown fast, gaining listeners who once preferred print. At the same time, attention spans are shrinking as short-form video reshapes how we consume information. In an era built around likes, shares and instant search results, there is a real case for finding a better balance between online and offline living.

Children under 16 in particular need more exposure to offline living, and less dependence on screens. Time away from devices helps children build social skills, sharpen critical thinking, and learn to approach problems from multiple angles — all of which support holistic personal development.

Of course, context matters. During the Covid-19 pandemic, online education became the only option once lockdowns were imposed, and digital learning kept formal education running when nothing else could. But in a post-pandemic world, governments are increasingly reconsidering how much unsupervised screen time is appropriate for children. China’s “minor mode” framework restricts screen time by age; the United Kingdom has moved to ban social media for under-16s from 2027; and New Zealand has introduced legislation to do the same. In India, Karnataka announced in its 2026 state budget that it would ban social media use for under-16s, and Goa’s government has said it is studying a similar move. The details of enforcement remain unsettled in most of these cases, but the direction of the debate is clear: policymakers across the world are actively discussing how to limit children’s social media access. A middle path — rather than an outright ban — is worth considering.

Digital Detox Awareness

Schools are well placed to lead here. A monthly digital detox awareness session, run by trained resource persons and built around hands-on, creative activities, could help draw out children’s imagination while gently reducing screen dependence. Students could keep a diary of their experience — what they noticed, what they missed, what surprised them — during each digital detox day. Over time, schools could even form “digital holiday clubs” to mark one day a month as a shared offline day. Practised consistently through school life, this could help a generation grow into adults with more clarity of thought and purpose — provided they use that offline time for something creative and productive, rather than simply waiting it out.

In practice, a life entirely without the internet isn’t realistic for most of us. But digital minimalism is achievable, and a single digital holiday once a month is a reasonable place to start. Switching off completely for one day can open space for new ideas and reconnect us with the natural world.

That day can also be a chance for self-reflection — a deliberate pause to look inward. It can be used to build a skill: writing, cooking, dancing, whatever draws you. It’s an opportunity for offline meetups with friends and family, for cycling a short distance, for reading a book purely because you chose it, not because an algorithm suggested it. A digital holiday can help you rediscover what actually matters to you and reset your priorities. It also strengthens real relationships — the kind built through presence, not notifications — and leaves room for practices like yoga and meditation that support genuine mental peace.

Digital Detox Is Harder for Working Professionals

For working professionals, this is harder. Most of us are running behind deadlines, structuring our days around work and family obligations already. Stepping outside that loop, even for a day, takes real intention. But the practice of digital detox is worth the friction — it teaches delayed gratification and reintroduces us to the quieter pleasures of offline living.

None of this is a case against technology. Instant messaging and the broader digital revolution have made services faster and more accessible than ever, and that’s worth acknowledging. But speed and convenience come with a cost if we let them: information overload, and an over-reliance on AI chatbots for decisions that deserve real human judgement. Blindly following AI-generated advice isn’t something to encourage. The internet is a necessity now — but that makes the case for balance stronger, not weaker.

Reconnect with nature. Spend real time with the people who matter to you. And once in a while, take the leap: switch off for a day, and notice the difference it makes.

The next phase of artificial intelligence is taking shape inside the companies building it. AI agents are being trained to handle hours-long assignments, while researchers are using AI to write code, investigate technical problems and help develop the next generation of AI systems. AGI generally refers to an AI system capable of learning, reasoning and applying knowledge across a broad range of tasks, rather than being limited to a narrow set of functions.

There is no universally accepted definition or test for AGI, so there is still no agreed threshold for declaring that a system has reached it. But many jobs gradually moving into automation, pushing thousands into uncertainty might help us understand the whole story.

OpenAI says more than 70% of sampled Codex users in May 2026 asked the coding agent to handle tasks estimated to take more than an hour. About a quarter made at least one request estimated at more than eight hours. Anthropic reported in August that Claude was leading 26% of the AI research and development work covered by its internal measurement system, compared with less than 1% in February. Both figures come from the companies themselves and are not measures of the wider economy.

For most people, AI is still something they consult. Ask a question, get an answer. Give it a document, get a summary. Ask for code, get code. That model is changing. The newer systems can take an assignment, break it into steps, use software and other tools, check their progress and continue working with less human intervention.

What happens when AI can handle much more of the work itself? That question sits at the heart of the debate over artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

From Prompts to Assignments

A programmer can ask AI to write a function. An agent can be given a larger job: inspect an existing project, build a feature, run tests, find problems and make corrections. The AI is handling a sequence of tasks rather than producing one answer. That distinction could eventually change how many kinds of knowledge work are organised.

AI is Helping Build AI

Frontier AI companies are already making the change clear. OpenAI says it has developed an “automated research intern” capable of performing defined research tasks under human direction. The company says it is working towards an automated AI researcher by March 2028.

Anthropic’s August figures point in the same direction. The company says Claude is increasingly being used in its own AI research and development, although it remains dependent on human researchers and is not fully autonomous in the measured work. AI is helping researchers build better AI.

So, When does AGI Arrive?

Researchers disagree about the capabilities AGI should demonstrate, and no accepted test exists. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said in May that he expected AGI could arrive within roughly four years, possibly sooner. If an AI can research a subject, analyse data, write software, use several digital tools and complete a complex assignment, how much of that work still needs to be done by a person? Work will change before we have an answer.

A researcher could delegate a literature review and data analysis. A programmer could hand over an entire software feature. Some tasks may disappear from jobs. Others may become faster. New work will emerge around supervising, testing and governing AI systems.

India is Preparing for the Shift

India is investing heavily in the infrastructure needed for the next phase of AI. The IndiaAI Mission has an approved outlay of ₹10,371.92 crore over five years. The government said in August 2026 that more than 45,000 GPUs had been onboarded through its shared computing programme and 237 projects had accessed subsidised capacity. Twenty indigenous foundation-model proposals had also been selected from 506 applications.

AI systems need to work across Indian languages and very different economic and institutional settings. OpenAI announced an India initiative with Tata Group in February covering areas including AI infrastructure and local capability. Google DeepMind has partnered with Indian institutions on applications in science, education, agriculture and energy.

It becomes harder when an AI system spends hours researching, writing code, analysing information and making decisions before presenting a result. The human role will increasingly involve setting the objective, judging evidence and deciding when a system should be trusted. AGI remains undefined, and nobody can put a reliable date on its arrival. But the shift towards more autonomous AI is already visible.