The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy is pleased to collaborate in the webinar series “AI and SDGs” launched with Global Policy Insights. It is co-coordinated by AHCD Associate Researcher Jérôme Duberry.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to address the social, economic and environmental dimensions of development and embark on the path of sustainable development by 2030. In this endeavor, there is a growing realization that artificial intelligence (AI) has a lot to offer in all of these areas. Promoting the realization of sustainable development goals through AI has attracted extensive attention and promotion from different countries and regions. Therefore, the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy and Global Policy Insight decided to launch a webinar series bringing together leaders, diplomats, scholars, entrepreneurs, and broader public private community to discuss the key areas of potential and the various challenges accompanied with AI in implementing SDGs.
It is widely recognized that in order to achieve the SDGs, for instance the vision of zero hunger, education, health, or climate change, machine learning model combined with smart logistics technology could be used to promote seamless connections between service providers and final consumers. Similarly, machine learning and prediction research based on the climate data have the potential to actively promote the human understanding of climate change, and thus be helpful to improve global climate action, analysis and support. In the public health governance system, it has already been seen how AI could be used widely in epidemic prevention, through contactless logistics and movement trajectory collection and analysis, which showcased the potential of this disruptive technology.
While promising results of AI applications has already been witnessed in the case of few SDGs like health, hunger, and climate change, there is a high likelihood that AI may exacerbate some of the challenges SDGs are aiming to mitigate. Given this imperative concern with regards to the development of AI, the webinars will deliberate upon how AI can bring us closer to achieving the sustainable development goal of fairness and justice or under what circumstances will it take us away from it. And thus the webinars will aim to identify the new opportunities and the developmental direction for AI to bring social and economic benefits into play in the future.
The launch of the series took place on 15 December. We will announce the dates for 2021 in January. Please contact Jerome.duberry@graduateinstitute.ch for more information.
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