Context’s latest release explores AI’s hidden costs through researcher Jibu Elias’s debut work, The New Divide: Power, Control & the Cost of AI
• As artificial intelligence reshapes economies and societies, the book offers a critical perspective from the Global South
• The New Divide examines who benefits from AI, who is left behind, and what happens when the tools we build begin to govern us
• A call to action on AI ethics and governance from a researcher at the heart of India’s AI ecosystem
• Beyond Silicon Valley optimism: exploring mass job displacement, deepening biases in AI systems, Big Tech consolidation, and the unexamined environmental costs of innovation
Context, an imprint of Westland Books, is set to release The New Divide: Power, Control & the Cost of AI, a debut book by Jibu Elias, an AI governance researcher, writer, and policy advisor with nearly a decade of experience shaping India’s AI landscape on 22nd June, 2026.
At a time when artificial intelligence is being presented as the next great engine of progress, The New Divide peels back the glossy surface of AI optimism to reveal the systems and power structures driving its development. Drawing on his experience across India’s AI ecosystem, international AI governance forums, and conversations with technologists, policymakers, and governments worldwide, Elias examines the widening gaps between AI’s promises and its real-world consequences.
The book addresses urgent questions: Who benefits from this technology? What happens to workers as algorithms reshape industries? How do biases embedded in AI systems reinforce existing inequalities? And what role do Big Tech giants play in shaping the future of AI ethics and governance? Elias argues that as AI becomes increasingly central to human agency and economics, the ethical frameworks guiding its development must be reformed.
Speaking about the book, author Jibu Elias said, “AI is often compared to the Industrial Revolution, but we forget that industrial revolutions are never only about machines. They are also about who owns the machines, whose labour is displaced, whose resources are extracted, and who is asked to live with the consequences. The New Divide asks whether AI will become a tool for shared human progress, or whether it will deepen the same inequalities that earlier technological revolutions left behind.”
The New Divide is a vital perspective from the Global South during a critical moment in AI’s trajectory. In a landscape dominated by Silicon Valley narratives, Elias brings a distinctly Indian and developing-world lens to questions of power, regulation, and human agency in an age of artificial intelligence.
