This guest article is adapted from the author’s new book From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech, published by MIT Press.
What do AI-enabled rhino collars in South Africa, computer-vision pest-detection drones in the Punjab farmlands, and wearable health devices in rural Malawi have in common?
These initiatives are all part of the AI for Good movement, which aligns AI technologies with the United Nations sustainable development goals to find solutions for global challenges like poverty, health, education, and environmental sustainability.
MIT Press
The hunger for AI-based solutions is understandable. In 2023, 499 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa, an increase of more than 10 percent from 2022. Several farmers in Punjab lost about 90 percent of their cotton yield to the pink bollworm; if the pest had been detected in time, they could have saved their crops. As for healthcare, despite decades of effort to boost the numbers of healthcare practitioners in rural areas, they continue to migrate to cities.
What makes AI “good,” though? Why do we need to preface AI applications in the Global South with morality and charity? And will noble intent translate to making AI tools work for the majority of the world?
A Changed Reality
The fact is, the Global South of decades ago does not exist.
Today the countries in the Global South are more confident, more entrepreneurial, and are taking leadership to pioneer locally appropriate AI tools that work for their people. Startups understand that the success of new tech is contingent on leveraging local knowledge for meaningful adoption and scaling.
The old formula of “innovate in the West and disseminate to the rest” is out of sync with this new reality. While the West holds onto its old missionary zeal, the South-South collaboration continues to grow, sharing new tech and building AI governance. What’s more, some tech altruism initiatives have come under scrutiny as they obfuscate their data extraction activities, making them more transactional than charitable.
The Market for Tech Altruism
In August, the European Union’s legal framework on AI, the AI Act, entered into force. Its measures are meant to help citizens and stakeholders optimize these tools while mitigating the risks. There is little mention of AI for good in their documents; it’s simply the default. Yet, as we shift from the Global North to the South, morality kicks in.
Tech altruism underlines this shift. Many of the AI for Good initiatives are funded by tech philanthropists in partnership with global aid agencies. Doing good manifests in piloting tech solutions, with the Global South as a live laboratory. A running joke with development workers is that their field suffers from “pilotitis,” an acute syndrome of pilot projects that never scale. The Global South is typically viewed as a recipient, a market, a beneficiary for techno-solutionism.
Take AI collars for rhinos. The
Read full article: When "AI for Good" Goes Wrong
The post “When "AI for Good" Goes Wrong” by Payal Arora was published on 09/05/2024 by spectrum.ieee.org