As artificial intelligence moves from experimentation to enforcement, the policy conversation is shifting just as quickly as the technology itself. In an interview with The Financial Express, Cathy Li, Head of the Centre for AI Excellence and member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum, speaks to Urvi Malvania about jobs, governance, fragmentation risks and why emerging economies — including India — may need to chart their own regulatory path. Excerpts.
1. As AI adoption accelerates, do you expect the bigger impact to be job displacement or the transformation of skills within existing roles?
The evidence suggests the larger impact will be the transformation of skills rather than widespread job loss, although displacement will occur in some sectors. The World Economic Forum’s Jobs Report 2025 analysis indicates that technological change is expected to produce major workforce shifts while still resulting in a net positive impact on jobs by 2030.
Automation may move many tasks away from humans, but collaboration between people and AI is expanding, particularly in healthcare and public services. More than three quarters of employers say they plan to retrain workers to collaborate with AI, and nearly seventy percent are hiring talent specifically to build or work with these systems. AI specialist roles themselves are projected to grow significantly, in some cases by up to eighty percent.
2. AI governance has moved from principles to policy discussions. Where are you seeing real implementation or enforcement begin to take shape?
We are entering the phase where governance becomes operational, not aspirational. The EU AI Act coming into force, along with the establishment of the EU AI Office, represents a concrete move toward enforcement structures. More broadly, governance conversations are shifting towards continuous compliance and building trust mechanisms directly into systems from the start: accountability, traceability, post-deployment monitoring, documentation and incident response are now baseline requirements. The organisations moving fastest are building governance into delivery.
3. Are we moving toward fragmented global technology ecosystems in areas like AI, data and cloud, or is meaningful interoperability still achievable?
There is certainly a risk of fragmentation driven by regulatory divergence, infrastructure concentration and geopolitical tensions. Forum governance work identifies fragmentation as a growing barrier to innovation and deployment. However, interoperability remains achievable if it is treated as a design objective from the outset. Progress on shared risk taxonomies, compatible certification approaches and portable governance frameworks suggests cooperation is still possible. In the “agent era,” this becomes even more urgent: agents need secure cross-system tool access, and emerging protocols plus zero-trust approaches are part of the solution.
4. Do emerging economies need a different approach to AI regulation and digital policy than developed markets?
In many cases they do, primarily because their priorities often centre on access, growth and infrastructure readiness rather than just risk management. For some emerging economies, the challenge is not simply how to regulate AI but how to ensure they can participate meaningfully in the AI economy in the first place.
One practical example gaining traction is the concept of digital embassies. Recent Centre for AI Excellence work highlights how digital embassies allow countries to operate data, AI workloads and digital public services in infrastructure located abroad while remaining under home country law and governance.
Another approach is to pair regulation with enablement: invest in capability building, support adoption in priority sectors, and design governance that is workable for local institutions and SMEs. And equity must be engineered early—especially at data collection, where interventions have the most leverage.
5. India’s digital public infrastructure has drawn global attention. Do you see it influencing how other countries design their digital systems?
Yes, particularly in how countries think about digital sovereignty combined with scale and interoperability. As mentioned, the Forum’s Digital Embassies work highlights interest in models that allow countries to maintain legal control over data and public digital services even when infrastructure is distributed across borders.
India’s experience with large scale digital public infrastructure shows that it is possible to combine inclusion, innovation and economic growth while maintaining public oversight. The transferable lesson for other countries is to design for interoperability, public trust and accountable data governance from day one, not as an afterthought.