Can We Use AI for Global Good?

Can the diverse artificial intelligence (AI) community come together to build an infrastructure to advance the United Nation's sustainable development goals (SDGs, https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs) around the world? Can global projects be developed that begin to address pressing issues surrounding some of our greatest humanitarian challenges to help all? Those were the goals of the second annual AI for Good Global Summit, the leading United Nations platform for dialogue on Artificial Intelligence held in Geneva, Switzerland, over three days in May. The conference was 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 32 sister UN agencies. The 500 attendees consisted of a diverse set of multi-stakeholders with wide-ranging expertise--from the individual UN agencies (including everything from UNESCO and UNICEF to The World Health Organization, The World Bank, and UNHCR), AI researchers, public- and private-sector decision-makers, potential financial partners and sponsor organizations.