The SDG Meetup: Can Data Matter More? Towards a Human AI for Human Development

The SDG Meetup is back, hosted for the first time by Fundacio Bofill at Hub Social!

This month, our main speaker is Emmanuel Letouzé, Marie Curie Fellow at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Founder of Data-Pop Alliance. His 30-minute presentation will be followed by a facilitated conversation with the audience, before hosting our traditional networking drinks.

In his presentation, Emmanuel will explore how can the promises of the Data Revolution and the potential of AI be better fulfilled for human development and democracy than has been the case to date and might be the case without significant course correction?

This presentation will seek to provide an overview of the nature, promises, achievements, limitations and prospects of the “Data Revolution”—including Big Data and AI— to date, propose and present a vision called “Human AI” where societies learn and improve through data-enabled feedback loops, and describe the role of data and other requirements for promoting this vision. In doing so, it will use examples from the work of Data-Pop Alliance in Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle-East and North Africa region and from that of other researchers, practitioners and activist in the field, and aim to solicit reactions, suggestions and discussions among the audience.

Data-Pop Alliance is a collaborative laboratory created by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, MIT Connection Science, and Overseas Development Institute. They bring together researchers, experts, practitioners, and activists to change the world with data through three pillars of work: diagnosing local realities and human problems with data and AI; mobilizing capacities, communities, and ideas towards more data literate societies, and transforming the systems and processes that underpin our societies and countries.