The Ai Element

This week we’re exploring if and how AI can help build a sustainable future. From solving climate change to improving health care, AI is being seen as a technology that can solve some of the world’s biggest problems. But can AI really save us? How can we be sure that AI for Good initiatives are actually helping the people they’re trying to reach? What role can, or should, AI practitioners play in finding solutions? Urvashi Vaneja explains why we should be skeptical of AI for Good initiatives that claim to be a cure-all and she shows how to start thinking constructively about how to do better. Sherif Elsayed-Ali shows how AI for Good can help scale the positive impact of human rights organizations and also why we need to expand our current understanding of human rights. Yoshua Bengio reflects on his recent research into different ways AI can be used to mitigate against and adapt to a changing climate. Yoshua also shares why he decided to use his machine learning expertise to try and solve climate change — and