Building the Future Artificial Intelligence Enabled NGO

Challenges, opportunities, and next steps to build the 21st century AI Powered NGO.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to help tackle some of the world’s most challenging problems. We are sure you have heard this before, it all sounds good in theory but how do we walk the talk?To find answers to these questions we organized a 1-hour webinar and panel discussion with some of the leading experts and organizations in the Humanitarian AI space.

 Source: Omdena LinkedIn

What all panelists agreed is one is that despite a lot of attention toward fancy and futuristic AI, there are hundreds of problems that can be addressed with current applications. AI has been around since the 1940s and can come with very pragmatic approaches to address real-world problems and generate value. Another big misconception is that organizations think they need to have a perfectly defined problem and dataset before they can leverage the potential of AI.

The reality is there are no perfect problems and also no perfect data, so better let us start creating value right now by shifting our mind towards pragmatic and collaborative practices.

Case studies we discussed in the webinar

• Understanding the sentiments, thoughts, and aspirations of young people
• Disaster Response: Predicting relief packages with UN WFP
• Building a Post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) risk classifier with no initial data

We wish this webinar and panel could have been longer to answer the many questions from the audience and discuss further how to apply AI most effectively to address urgent problems in the world.

In order to overcome challenges in the NGO space and harness the many opportunities, we all agreed on two essential ingredients; more collaboration and diversity of ideas and backgrounds.

As John Zoltner from Save the Children concluded in the panel:

“Let´s get the data together!”

Watch the full recording below