In my earlier reflection on Klara and the Sun (a book by Kazuo Ishiguro), I focused on how the author uses the perspective of an Artificial Friend to explore “consciousness” and how we relate to “intelligent systems”. Returning to the novel, I find myself drawn to a different thread: how inequality is engineered not through direct oppression, but through the careful design of systemic advantages.

Ishiguro’s story of a near‑future society does not simply imagine new technologies — it imagines the social arrangements they quietly normalize.

Social Stratification and Technological Inequality

Ishiguro’s world is not divided between humans and machines; it’s divided between the lifted and the unlifted — between children granted genetic enhancement and those excluded.

“Lifting” is presented as progress, but functions as a sorting mechanism. Some children receive enhancement and, with it, opportunity. Others are left to navigate a future with fewer expectations. Opportunities, expectations, and even social belonging are contingent on whether one has been modified.

Klara, who moves through this hierarchy as an object rather than a participant, observes this social order without grasping its full cruelty. Her innocence sharpens the reader’s awareness: inequality becomes most visible to those who cannot benefit from it.

From “Lifted” Childhoods to AI‑Augmented Lives

The fiction mirrors today’s anxieties around unequal access to digital tools, AI literacy, and AI‑driven augmentation. We often celebrate AI as a force for democratization, yet its benefits flow unevenly – as with other innovations. Access to advanced systems — or even the confidence to use them — becomes a form of privilege.

Without access or literacy, people may quietly slip out of future opportunities—not intentionally but because small, unnoticed gaps accumulate over time.

In the book, when optimization becomes a moral category, it quietly reshapes our understanding of worth. Childhood itself becomes an engineering project.

What Ishiguro imagines through fiction, we are now beginning to witness in policy debates and global AI development.

Inequality as an AI Governance Problem

These fictional dynamics are increasingly visible in our own world. Recent report from United Nations warn that AI’s economic and developmental benefits are becoming heavily concentrated, with 118 countries excluded from global governance discussions. Meanwhile, global investment patterns show that AI’s future is shaped by a small cluster of powerful nations and corporations.

The Technology and Innovation Report 2025, released by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), shows that just 100 companies, mostly in the United States and China, are behind 40 per cent of the world’s private investment in research and development, highlighting a sharp concentration of power.

Analysts describe this as a potential ‘Great Divergence’.

According to the UNDP report, titled The Next Great Divergence: Why AI May Widen Inequality Between Countries, “AI opens important new avenues for development, countries begin this transition from highly uneven positions to capture benefits and manage risks. Without strong policy action, these gaps can grow, reversing the long trend of narrowing development inequalities.”

UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence warns that AI systems can deepen existing inequalities if developed or deployed without strong ethical guardrails, emphasizing human rights, dignity, and the risks of bias and exclusion.

In essence, UNESCO articulates what Ishiguro dramatizes: when enhancement is unevenly distributed, it risks determining who is granted a future and who becomes dispensable.

An article published in April 2025 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) highlights a mechanism “that AI will exacerbate cross-country income inequality, disproportionately benefiting advanced economies. Indeed, the estimated growth impact in advanced economies could be more than double that in low-income countries. While improvements in AI preparedness and access can mitigate these disparities, they are unlikely to fully offset them.”

A Path Forward

The parallels with Ishiguro’s world are striking: engineered advantage, distributed unevenly, determines who is granted opportunity — and who is left behind.

• Advantage is not only earned — it is manufactured.
• Inequality is not only visible — it is designed.
• Exclusion is not only intentional — it is structural.

Ishiguro does not warn us about machines replacing humans. He warns us about humans replacing one another through engineered hierarchies disguised as progress.

AI today risks drawing similar lines — quietly, efficiently, and often invisibly. Unless we center human dignity, equitable access, and global participation in how we build and govern these systems we may build systems that reproduce — even automate — the very inequalities we hope to overcome.

This is where Klara and the Sun becomes more than fiction. It becomes a mirror.

The challenge ahead is not only to govern AI, but to ensure that its benefits, risks, and opportunities are shared. Not lifted for some, but lifted for all.

Further reading :

• AI’s $4.8 trillion future: UN warns of widening digital divide without urgent action (3 April 2025)
• AI risks sparking a new era of divergence as development gaps between countries widen, UNDP report finds (2 December 2025)
• AI’s impact could worsen gaps between world’s rich and poor, a UN report says (2 December 2025)
• Stanford University Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence The 2025 AI Index Report
• The Global Impact of AI – Mind the Gap