What it's about
AI for Good is the UN's leading platform on artificial intelligence. The summit is organized by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) in partnership with more than 50 UN agencies and co-convened with the Swiss government. The first edition took place in 2017 – annually in Geneva ever since. The basic idea: don't talk about AI as if it were pure risk or pure salvation, but show concretely where it serves the UN Sustainable Development Goals – health, food security, education, disaster response.
This year's edition ran from July 7 to 10 at Palexpo under the motto "Unlocking AI's potential to serve humanity". I attended the last two days, Thursday and Friday.
Impressions
The first thing you notice: very international, very diverse, lots of young people. It's clear that this isn't just the usual conference crowd.
There was no shortage of big names. will.i.am spoke about AI and creativity, and Ray Kurzweil delivered his keynote "AI and the Next Decade of Human Progress" – not in person, but virtually, together with "RAI", his own digital twin, which made its debut that Friday. One Kurzweil interviewing the other; you don't have to like it, but there's hardly a more consistent way to illustrate his own thesis of merging with technology. The programme also featured names like John Legend, Björn Ulvaeus, Maria Ressa, Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell.
The common thread through almost every session: the appeal to harness the positive side of AI while actively mitigating its risks. No naive euphoria, but no alarmism either.
Big cinema
Quite literally: two AI documentaries celebrated their European premieres, among them "RAISE" by Michael P. Nash – films in which people around the world were interviewed about their hopes and fears regarding AI.
Then there was the competition for AI-generated short films. The quality has reached a remarkable level by now. I particularly liked "Another Day" by Saif Hamza, a film about Alzheimer's, based on a true story.
Use cases that stuck with me
There were many AI use cases presented that impacted the society for good. Three applications particularly impressed me:
A mosquito detector that identifies mosquito species in real time by their wingbeat and visualizes them on a city map – Anopheles, Culex, Aedes aegypti, i.e. the vectors of malaria, dengue and Zika. An early warning system instead of blanket spraying.
A robot with a companion app for autistic children, supporting them in practicing social interaction. And AI for optimizing water consumption in regions facing water scarcity.
Takeaway
I was positively surprised by the sheer range of topics. And the summit reinforces an impression that has been solidifying for me for a while: AI technologies are quite a milestone in the evolution of human history. For four days, Geneva showed that this is about more than chatbots and stock prices.