Hi folks, this is some exciting Open Source news from the social sector, specifically the governments of Norway and Sierra Leone, UNICEF, and iSPIRT:
The [Digital Public Goods] Alliance, supported by the UN Secretary’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, defines digital public goods as: “open source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable best practices, do no harm and are of high relevance for attainment of the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” and works to facilitate their discovery, development and advancement.
from reading the report they point to the use of AI for responding to health crises, including the 2014 ebola response in west africa and the current covid-19 pandemic (alas). i can also speak to the use of open AI in malaria prevention in east africa.
they also point to autonomous weapons models, which (thankfully) i have no experience with.
from what i’ve been watching, there’s a lot of dialogue about bringing openness and by extension – at least they claim –ethics to AI. i thought this was interesting: “There are currently over 160 organizational, national and international sets of artificial intelligence ethics and governance principles worldwide.”
ps there’s like a lot of AI in all the open mapping world… facebook actually (ethically?) leads a lot of it.