The AI for Good World Summit 2025 brings collectively governments, tech leaders, teachers, civil society and younger folks to discover how synthetic intelligence may be directed towards Sustainable Growth Targets (SDGs) – and away from rising dangers of inequality, disinformation and environmental pressure.
“We’re the AI era,” stated Doreen Bogdan-Martin, chief of the Worldwide Telecommunications Union (ITU) – UN’s specialised company for data and communications know-how – in a keynote deal with.
However being a part of this era means extra than simply utilizing these applied sciences.
“It means contributing to this whole-of-society upskilling effort, from early education to lifelong studying,” she added.
Warnings on AI dangers
Ms. Bogdan-Martin warned of mounting risks in deploying AI with out adequate public understanding or coverage oversight.
“The most important danger we face shouldn’t be AI eliminating the human race. It’s the race to embed AI all over the place, with out adequate understanding of what meaning for folks and our planet,” she stated.
Her remarks mirrored a rising sense of urgency amongst policymakers and technologists, as new “agentic AI” methods able to autonomous reasoning and motion emerge at unprecedented velocity.
With some specialists predicting human-level AI inside the subsequent three years, considerations about security, bias, power consumption and regulatory capability have intensified.
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Tech on show on the AI for Good World Summit.
Tech on show
The summit’s agenda displays these tensions.
Over 20,000 sq. meters of exhibit area at Geneva’s Palexpo now hosts greater than 200 demonstrations, together with a flying automotive, a fish-inspired water high quality monitor, brain-computer interfaces and AI-driven catastrophe response instruments.
Workshops all through the week will deal with subjects starting from AI in healthcare and training to ethics, gender inclusion and world governance.
One spotlight would be the AI Governance Day on Thursday, the place nationwide regulators and worldwide organizations will deal with the hole in world oversight. An ITU survey discovered that 85 per cent of nations lack an AI-specific coverage or technique, elevating alarms about uneven growth and rising digital divides.
Give attention to well being
Well being is a outstanding theme this 12 months.
On Wednesday, the UN World Well being Group (WHO) will lead a session titled “Enabling AI for Well being Innovation and Entry,” bringing collectively technologists, regulators, clinicians and humanitarian leaders to deal with how AI can enhance healthcare supply – particularly in low-resource settings.
Actual-world functions – from AI-powered triage in emergency care to diagnostic instruments for rural clinics – might be spotlighted, alongside a preview of WHO’s forthcoming Technical Temporary on AI in Conventional Medication.
Specialists will even study the challenges of interoperability, regulatory harmonisation and mental property rights on the intersection of AI and world well being. The summit will characteristic the AI for Good Awards, recognising groundbreaking initiatives that harness AI for public profit, with classes spanning folks, planet and prosperity.
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Tech on show on the AI for Good World Summit in Geneva.
Launchpad for motion
The well being monitor exemplifies the summit’s core purpose: guaranteeing AI serves the general public good, particularly in areas of biggest want.
Youth-led robotics groups from underserved communities will current options for catastrophe restoration and waste administration, whereas startups compete within the Innovation Manufacturing unit to showcase AI instruments for training and local weather resilience.
Dwell demonstrations embrace an autonomous orchard robotic, a self-sanitising cellular rest room and a drone-eDNA system for scalable biodiversity and pest monitoring.
Closing her keynote, Ms. Bogdan-Martin reminded contributors that the way forward for AI is a shared duty.
“Let’s by no means cease placing AI on the service of all folks and our planet,” she stated.
