AI for Good blog

How will AI accelerate sustainable development? Find out at the AI for Good Global Summit.

Inclusivity | Innovation & Creativity

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken giant leaps forward in recent years, inspiring growing confidence in AI’s ability to assist in solving some of humanity’s greatest challenges. Leaders in AI and humanitarian action are convening on the neutral platform offered by the United Nations to work towards AI improving the quality and sustainability of life on our planet.

Organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technology (ICT) – in partnership with the XPRIZE Foundation, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and close to 30 sister United Nations agencies, the 3rd annual AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, 28-31 May, is the leading United Nations platform for inclusive dialogue on AI. The goal of the summit is to identify practical applications of AI to accelerate progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The 2017 summit marked the beginning of global dialogue on the potential of AI to act as a force for good. The action-oriented 2018 summit gave rise to numerous ‘AI for Good’ projects, including an ‘AI for Health’ initiative supported by ITU and the World Health Organization (WHO). The 2019 summit will continue to connect AI innovators with public and private-sector decision-makers, building collaboration to maximize the impact of the ‘AI for Good’ movement.

The 2019 summit will highlight AI’s value in advancing education, healthcare and wellbeing, social and economic equality, space research, and smart and safe mobility.

The summit is designed to generate ‘AI for Good’ projects able to be enacted in the near term, guided by the summit’s multi-stakeholder and inter-disciplinary audience. It also formulates supporting strategies to ensure trusted, safe and inclusive development of AI technologies and equitable access to their benefits.

The 2019 summit will highlight AI’s value in advancing education, healthcare and wellbeing, social and economic equality, space research, and smart and safe mobility. It will propose actions to assist high-potential AI solutions in achieving global scale. It will host debate around unintended consequences of AI as well as AI’s relationship with art and culture. And a ‘learning day’ will offer potential AI adopters an audience with leading AI experts and educators.

The summit will also feature an invitation only gathering of AI experts and researchers on 27 May, with the aim of furthering fundamental AI research, developing new methods that will define future of AI development.

A dynamic show floor will demonstrate innovations at the cutting edge of AI research and development, such as the IBM Watson live debater; the Fusion collaborative exoskeleton; RoboRace, the world’s first self-driving electric racing car; avatar prototypes, and the ElliQ social robot for the care of the elderly. Summit attendees can also look forward to AI-inspired performances from world-renowned musician Jojo Mayer and beatboxer Reeps One.

Over 100 speakers have been confirmed to date, including:

  • Jim Hagemann Snabe – Chairman, Siemens
  • Cédric Villani – AI advisor to the President of France, and Mathematics Fields Medal Winner
  • Jean-Philippe Courtois – President of Global Operations, Microsoft
  • Anousheh Ansari, CEO, XPRIZE Foundation, Space Ambassador
  • Yves Daccord – Director General, International Committee of the Red Cross
  • Yan Huang – Director AI Innovation, Baidu
  • Timnit Gebru – Head of AI Ethics, Google
  • Vladimir Kramnik – World Chess Champion
  • Vicki Hanson – CEO, ACM
  • Zoubin Ghahramani – Chief Scientist, Uber, and Professor of Engineering, University of Cambridge
  • Lucas di Grassi – Formula E World Racing Champion, CEO of Roborace

Confirmed speakers also include C-level and expert representatives of MasterCard, NASA, Byton, Bosch, Philips, Intel, Nethope, Stanford University, Cambridge Quantum Computing, NVIDIA, Darktrace, IBM, Minecraft, Iridescent, IPSoft, Ocean Protocol, European Space Agency, Botnar Foundation, Google, Mechanica.ai, WWF, Open AI, Factmata, IEEE, IFIP, Deloitte, PWC, EPFL, University of Geneva, and the cities of Montreal and Pittsburg.

Please visit the summit programme for more information on the latest speakers, breakthrough sessions and panels.

More information is available here.

Join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #AIforGood