Artificial intelligence will create a new era of global inequality unless poorer countries can share in the benefits, the head of the World Trade Organization has warned.

AI could boost goods and services trade by nearly 40 per cent by 2040, according to econometric modelling by the international trade body, which urged rich world governments not to repeat the mistake of previous rounds of globalisation.

"AI could deepen inequalities rather than reducing them," warned WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in the organisation's annual trade report, which was published on Wednesday.

"Recent decades of globalisation delivered major gains for both rich and poor countries, but many people and regions did not share adequately in the benefits," she wrote. "This exclusion has much to do with today's tensions around trade -- and it is an experience we cannot afford to repeat with the AI revolution."

Okonjo-Iweala's call comes after US President Donald Trump launched his assault on rules-based global trade, using unilateral tariffs to extract concessions from trade partners in breach of the WTO's core principles of equal treatment.

The WTO warned that the concentration of AI resources in rich-world countries, including regulatory and computational power, risked leaving "entire economies" behind, if steps were not taken to broaden access.

Its modelling found that poorer economies' incomes would rise by 8 per cent by 2040 if they were unable to catch up, compared with 14 per cent for high-income economies.

But if lower-income countries could close the "digital infrastructure gap" by half, then "income growth could reach 15 per cent" as a result of adopting AI more widely.

The WTO calculated that the handful of companies producing key AI hardware collectively control more than 80 per cent of the global chip market, while noting that mining of critical raw materials such as gallium and germanium used in semiconductors are also concentrated in a few economies.

The trade in physical AI-enabling goods -- from semiconductors to computers and chemicals -- was worth $2.3tn dollars in 2023, but far greater future benefits will come from AI's ability to turbocharge trade in goods and digital services.

Amandeep Singh Gill, the UN special envoy for emerging technologies, said AI turned data, including on transaction patterns, shipping routes and seasonal trends, ''into something actionable''.

''Suddenly, a small manufacturer in Ghana can get insights that used to be available only to multinational corporations," he wrote.

Broadening the manufacturing base for AI hardware was a "critical component" of inclusive AI development, the report found, noting that this had occurred in previous rounds of technology expansion, such as the internet and mobile telephones.

The WTO also warned that avoiding regulatory fragmentation -- where different jurisdictions apply varying rules in areas such as data management and intellectual property -- was essential for the expansion of AI in trade, noting that poorer countries often adopted the most restrictive policies.

Independent trade analysts agreed that AI had huge potential to enable companies to better understand supply chains, while helping them identify and exploit new markets at unprecedented speed, but warned that international trade rules now needed to catch up.

"WTO rules on services trade haven't been updated since the mid-1990s before the internet, and some countries are trying to agree ecommerce agreements that don't deal with any of these issues," said George Riddell, managing director of Goyder Ltd, a trade consultancy.

Using AI-powered bots to manage complex customs paperwork also posed risks, he added: "If it makes a mistake and the revenue service comes after you, it won't be the AI having to pay the duty."

AI risks widening global wealth gap, WTO warns