Originally posted on The Horizons Tracker. As William Easterly explains in The White Man's Burden, while huge sums have been spent on aid to developing countries, much has been wasted due to the supposed hubris of the west. Easterly argues that much of development work is the preserve of so-called "planners", who concoct investment schemes from their offices in western cities and then impose them on the recipient community. Research1 from ETH Zurich ponders whether AI might be able to do a better job. The researchers suggest that it is often difficult to get an accurate overview of the work being done due to the multitude of projects and institutions supporting them.