Countries both rich and poor must take faster action to cut debt and counter growing inequality as their economies weather a triple whammy from the artificial intelligence boom , heavy borrowing and shocks from wars in the Middle East and Ukraine , the head of the IMF said Wednesday. “Some very tough political choices stare us in the face,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a speech in Singapore ahead of autumn IMF-World Bank meetings to be held in Bangkok next week. “My message to the world’s economic policymakers next week will be this: we cannot keep delaying necessary policy action — you have the tools, now have the wisdom to use them,” she said. At the meetings in Bangkok, finance ministers and central bank governors of 191 IMF-World Bank member countries will assess the state of the world economy and discuss strategies to support financial stability and sustained growth. So far, the hardest recent hits to global well-being have come from conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere, Georgieva noted. , Japan and Germany, as well as low-income countries that must choose between spending on public welfare or repaying onerous loans at a time of high interest rates, she noted. Georgieva pointed to risks associated with the rapid buildup of data center capacity to deliver artificial intelligence , which has helped push stock prices in many places to record highs, supporting strong economic growth despite high energy costs due to the Iran war . Investments in AI are likely to exceed the relative scale of spending on building railroads, electricity grids and telecommunications networks.