The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) published the 33^rd edition of its Human Development Report titled “A matter of choice: People and possibilities in the age of AI”, which examines what differentiates the new era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) from previous digital transformations and what could these differences mean for human development. According to the UNDP, a global survey was conducted for the purpose of the report that found a substantial use of AI across all levels of the Human Development Index (HDI) with circa 20% of respondents confirming their use of AI, bearing in mind that the survey expects this figure to rise rapidly. In addition, the survey findings showed that around two-thirds of respondents in low, medium, and high HDI countries expect to use AI in all the dimensions of the HDI (education, health, and work) within one year. The report commented that as AI is improving at a fast pace, human development is stagnating as evidenced by the flat-lining progress in the HDI, which has yet to recover from the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent crises. In the same vein, the report stated that although the global HDI value is expected to attain record highs in 2024, the increase would be the lowest progress achieved since the inception of the index in 1990. The report also mentioned that nearly 40% of survey respondents expect AI to “automate and augment” jobs in the future, with the majority of surveyed individuals responding in favor of job augmentation. The report noted that as more individuals use AI, their confidence in AI’s ability to increase productivity increases, especially in developing countries. Accordingly, the HDR identifies three areas of action for AI-augmented human development, namely building a complementary economy (to allow individuals and AI to collaborate more rather than compete), driving innovation with intent (so that opportunities for individuals are built-in as an integral part of AI design and deployment), and investing in capabilities that count (grant individuals the capabilities to make the most of AI in their lives and succeed in an AI world).  The HDI is computed based on the scores attained in four main aspects of human development namely, life expectancy at birth, expected years of schooling, mean years of schooling and the gross national income per capita (GNI/Capita) in a total of 193 countries based on data collected for the year 2023. More specifically, 74 countries were classified as having very high human development, 50 as high human development, 43 as medium human development and 26 countries came in the low human development group. Globally, Iceland topped the list with an HDI score of 0.972, followed closely by Norway (HDI: 0.970), Switzerland (HDI: 0.970), Denmark (HDI: 0.962), Germany (HDI: 0.959) and Sweden (HDI: 0.959), only to name a few. On a regional basis, the United Arab Emirates ranked first and came in the 15^th place in the world with an HDI score of 0.940 followed by Saudi Arabia (global rank: 37, HDI: 0.900), Bahrain (global rank: 38, HDI: 0.899), and Qatar (global rank: 43, HDI: 0.886), Oman (global rank: 50, HDI: 0.858) and Kuwait (global rank: 52, HDI: 0.852). Locally, the report classified Lebanon among countries with “high human development” as the country registered an HDI score of 0.752 placing it in the 102^nd position in the world and in the 10^th place among its Arab peers. In detail, the average life expectancy at birth in Lebanon stood at 77.8 years, while expected years of schooling was 11.7 years in 2023, and the mean years of schooling stood at 10.4 years. Lebanon’s gross national income per capita reached 11,299 $PPP in 2023 compared to an Arab states’ average of 15,825 $PPP and a world average of 20,327 $PPP. Moreover, Lebanon’s HDI score outperformed the average HDI score of the Arab region of 0.719 yet underperformed the world’s average HDI score of 0.756.