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XXIII INFOPOVERTY WORLD CONFERENCE “A.I. turmoil digital processes: how to act to ensure human rights and provide e-welfare for all?”
12 April
April 12, 2023
UN Headquarters, New York – online
Live streamed on UN Webcast
PRESENTATION
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and the harrowing realities of ongoing wars, a new
perception of Society has surfaced. This newfound awareness has been further altered by the advent of AI, fundamentally reshaping our outlook on the imminent future, amplifying concerns and uncertainties surrounding a digitally dominated world.
Operating since the dawn of the digital revolution, the Infopoverty World Conference has punctually chronicled the pivotal junctures of this era. Its focus remains on spotlighting commendable projects and practices that merit the attention of the United Nations system, under whose auspices it was established, with the mission of promoting the achievement of the MDGs and SDGs through the strategic utilization of ICTs and new technologies.
A fresh chapter is unfolding, propelled by a cohort of digital natives and the pervasive integration of new technologies shaping the very essence of progress. Within this landscape, tackling the diverse array of new and sometimes unethical occurrences—largely driven by private entities wielding control over infrastructure and operational platforms—has ascended to paramount significance. Delaying the resolution of these issues is no longer tenable.
The proclaimed SDGs have paved the way for development as a guiding compass. Now, substantial technical, social, political, and economic endeavors are imperative, especially directed towards marginalized communities, to allocate significant resources into AI-driven e-services to surmount the deficiencies and challenges in telecommunication infrastructure, e-learning, food security, telemedicine, and e-governance. ICTs and AI stand as viable and potent solutions to contemporary challenges, provided they are ethically tested and applied to address the essential requirements of people. This, in turn, mandates their integration into foundational global action plans and policies.
How should we steer the impetus of AI to orient it towards overcoming of inequalities, climate emergencies, and challenging instances?
How to address the paradoxical binomial between digital excellence and its diverted
use, it being at the basis of a struggling achievement of the SDGs putting the protection of human rights on the back burner?
How to attest that ICTs and AI serve as effective responses to contemporary
challenges only if they undergo ethical examination and prone to human needs?
On these premises, drawing from the results elaborated in the past Final Declarations, addressing the topic “AI turmoils digital processes: how to act to ensure human rights and provide e-welfare for all?”, the 23rd Infopoverty World Conference will convene as a think-tank, gathering distinguished experts to showcase pioneering projects aimed at achieving the UN 2030 Agenda and beyond.
To do so, the conference will first draft the map of asynchronism to draw knowledge-sharing policies allowing economic, political and technological fences to be overcome, to later focus on e-welfare4all and the critical gaps to be covered to attain it, namely food-security, health and education to launch an appeal for investments on best practices to lead the transition towards an ethical, sustainable and SDGs inspired digital Society leaving no one behind.