A Matter of Choice: People and Possibilities in the Age of AI

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has launched the Human Development Index 2025. 

The report explores the implications of artificial intelligence for human development and the choices we can make to ensure that it enhances human capabilities. Rather than attempting to predict the future, the report argues that we must shape it — by making bold decisions so that AI augments what people can do.

This is the second report in a trilogy examining key dimensions of uncertainty: addressing polarization (2023-24), shaping our shared digital future (2025), and navigating the Anthropocene through human aspirations (2026).

Artificial intelligence (AI) has broken into a dizzying gallop, the UNDP states on its website: While AI feats grab headlines, they privilege technology in a make-believe vacuum, obscuring what really matters: people’s choices.
 

The choices that people have and can realize, within ever expanding freedoms, are essential to human development, whose goal is for people to live lives they value and have reason to value. A world with AI is flush with choices the exercise of which is both a matter of human development and a means to advance it.

Going forward, development depends less on what AI can do — not on how human-like it is perceived to be — and more on mobilizing people’s imaginations to reshape economies and societies to make the most of it. Instead of trying vainly to predict what will happen, this year’s Human Development Report asks what choices can be made so that new development pathways for all countries dot the horizon, helping everyone have a shot at thriving in a world with AI.