Posts

, ,

AI In International Development: The Benefits and Drawbacks

AI In International DevelopmentThe launch of ChatGPT and other language models is only the latest evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI). While so much focus is on how AI is reshaping education and the workplace, its impacts go much further. These and other emerging AI applications promise to reshape the world, but more attention is necessary to understand how to best use AI in international development and understand the consequences of using it. AI has the capability to support development programs. It also shows great potential in fostering positive outcomes in health, inclusive governance, economic growth and building environmental safeguards.

The Benefits of Using AI for International Development

The key ways AI can aid international development objectives include the following:

  • Data Analysis: AI technology can analyze vast amounts of data from various sources, including census, surveys and social media, to identify patterns and trends in poverty rates, income inequality and access to basic services. This helps governments make informed decisions and allocate resources more effectively to address poverty.
  • Predictive Modeling & Early Warning Systems: AI can help create predictive models that forecast future poverty rates and identify high-risk populations. It can do similar analyses to predict and serve as early warnings for disasters. This comes with the upside of enabling governments to anticipate and prepare for future challenges and develop targeted interventions.
  • Decision Support Systems: AI can help develop decision support systems that provide real-time information to policymakers on the impact of various policy options. This could help governments make more informed decisions and identify the most effective policy interventions.
  • Digital Financial Inclusion: AI technology can assist to develop digital financial services such as mobile banking and microfinance to provide financial services to underserved populations. This can potentially facilitate poverty alleviation by providing access to credit, savings and insurance to those who may not have had access before.
  • Precision Agriculture: AI also has applications in agriculture where it helps to optimize crop yields, reduce wastage and increase food security. This can help farmers in developing countries to boost income and reduce poverty by increasing productivity and profitability.
  • Supporting Low-Carbon Systems: AI systems could help cities efficiently use resources and enable smart and low-carbon cities and support circular economies that use a broad range of AI tech such as electric cars, smart appliances and smart grids.

Achieving Development Objectives with AI

The aforementioned applications are not hypothetical as governments have already begun using AI tools to achieve development objectives. Some of such achievements are as follows:

  • Health Care Improvements: The government of Rwanda is using AI to deliver medical supplies to remote areas through drones with the help of Zipline Inc. In India, the government launched Aarogya Setu, an AI-based platform to track and prevent the spread of COVID-19. The platform uses AI to collect data on COVID-19 cases and also provide real-time information to citizens.
  • Reporting Violence: In Bangladesh, AI tools have been used to track media reports of violence against women by creating a visualization, emphasizing different and specific cases of gender-based assault.
  • Monitoring Protected Habitats: Private industries like Rainforest Connection are using AI to work with governments in monitoring protected habitats. Rainforest Connection uses AI to recognize patterns of activity related to poaching, including alerts for trucks, cars and motorcycles that poachers use in key protected areas.

The Drawbacks

While AI has the potential to improve many aspects of society, there are also issues that raise concerns. Some of such issues include:

  • Bias and Fairness: AI systems are only as good as the data they are trained on and if the data contains biases, the system will reproduce those biases. This could lead to unfair and discriminatory outcomes, particularly for marginalized groups.
  • Ethical Considerations: There are ethical questions around the use of AI, particularly around issues of privacy and consent, according to a USAID report. For example, collecting and using personal data to deliver aid could be an invasion of privacy, particularly in contexts where there are weak data protection laws.
  • Technical Limitations: AI systems are not a silver bullet for poverty reduction and there are limits to what they can do. For example, they may struggle to deal with complex social and cultural contexts or to address the root causes of poverty.
  • Cost and Access: AI technology can be expensive to develop and deploy, and this can limit its use in low-income countries. There may also be issues around access, particularly in areas with poor internet connectivity or limited technical expertise.
  • Accountability and Transparency: There are concerns around the accountability and transparency of AI systems, particularly if using such systems to make decisions about resource allocation or service provision. It may be difficult to understand how the system arrived at a particular decision and to challenge that decision if it is incorrect or unfair.

What is Next?

AI has the power to foster progress by enabling the achievement of long-sought development goals, but it can just as easily be a catalyst for creating further inequality and conflict and strengthening authoritarian governments. This suggests that increased international cooperation and regulation are necessary to curb or control the negative externalities of AI development.

– Andrew Giganti
Photo: Unsplash

, , , ,

How AI Technology is Helping Developing Nations

AI technology
AI technology is all around and many use it without even knowing it. However, many people in developing countries cannot access this technology without help. WorldData has reported that there are 152 developing countries worldwide, with a population of 6.69 billion. The entirety of Central and South America and Africa are developing nations, along with the majority of Asia and other island states. About 9% of the global population is living in extreme poverty, earning less than $1.90 per day, and living below the higher poverty line. More than 20% earn less than $3.20 per day and more than 40% earn less than $5.50.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is basically coding and software that help people in daily life. While people know it best for its role in science and medicine, it also has a role in the productive robots in factories, the voice recognition in smartphones, the software that detects online viruses and the drones that deliver packages and help farmers. While there is no official definition for AI, it is typically a man-made machine that does things humans cannot do in a timely manner or at all. The term “artificial intelligence” or “AI” was created in 1956 at a conference in New Hampshire, the United States, but AI machines existed before that.

How is AI Technology Helping Developing Nations?

Agriculture. AI technology supports many different aspects of agriculture, particularly in Africa. It helps farmers take care of their crops by detecting when is the best time to plant and harvest. It can also help detect when crops are sick. For example, mCrops is a form of AI that helps diagnose crop diseases in Uganda. Additionally, another AI that is helpful in agriculture is drones that spray pesticides on sick plants. However, they can also spray water and help plant new crops in the healthiest parts of the ground. An example of this is Aerobotics, which works in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

Education. AI technology can help developing nations, especially in rural areas, with education because it is effective for illiteracy, coursework and general school subjects, and can alleviate the short supply of teachers and supplies using tutoring technology. Sites like Dapito, Eneza Education and Tutorful help people connect around the world. For example, they teach English to non-English speakers, customizing content and lessons for a specific student. Students in developing nations are intelligent, but they lack qualified teachers and are sometimes unable to travel to school. For example, travel might not be available when there are floods and when they are sick, especially when many schools are far away.

Recognition. This method of AI includes location and supports many fields, such as health care, natural disasters, deliveries and shipments, and more, generally by the use of drones. An earthquake hit Nepal in 2015 where the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) used AI in relief to locate damage from social media posts, mobile devices, satellites and multiple other devices. Currently, the World Wildlife Fund uses drones in Kenya to arrest wildlife poachers, and UNICEF is building a machine to detect malnutrition using facial recognition.

AI Technology and Health Care

AI technology is helping globally, especially in rural countries in Africa. It is constantly undergoing development for health care but relies on the government, NGOs and medical professionals to authorize machines for medical use and support. AI can diagnose patients, recommend treatments and discover global viruses. For those living in rural and developing nations, AI is lifesaving as it can locate injured people which a normal navigation or GPS system cannot do, and send medicine and medical supplies via drones. It also provides qualified doctors to countries with a lack of medical professionals and to those who need a second opinion on diagnoses, treatment and surgery. This reduces costs, manual labor and mortality rates and develops education in health care and literacy.

In 2022, the University of West Scotland developed new AI technology that enables lung diseases to be identified faster with an accuracy of 98%, meaning diseases are less likely to spread and more people will be correctly diagnosed before a disease progresses and can receive treatment. Further research has found that it can detect COVID-19 cases. This technology is especially useful in developing nations during winter periods especially and globally in general. This will not replace human labor but will support hospitals. This AI technology cuts short the long wait and use of CT scans, blood tests, x-rays and ultrasounds, cutting down further costs and time taken to identify disease and illness.

– Deanna Barratt
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

, , , , , , , ,

The Top 5 Health Tech Companies in Spain

The Top 5 Health Tech Companies in SpainThe world of health technology has been growing exponentially in the last decade and continues to grow, especially with the novel coronavirus still affecting the world. One of the most prominent locations for health technology is in Spain. The industry has a large quantity of health tech company startups in Spain; high-quality companies are making new drug discoveries for treatments and creating virtual therapies that can help those in impoverished areas receive the medical care they need. Here are the top five health tech companies making strides in Spain.

The Top 5 Health Tech Companies in Spain

  1. Elma Care is an app that combines comprehensive health insurance with remote medical consultations. This great new resource emerged in Barcelona, Spain, in 2017. Elma Care is one of the top five health tech companies in Spain because the app keeps all of a patient’s medical information in one place, allows consultation with primary care physicians remotely and offers tools like preventative medicine plans to help people access healthcare with more ease and efficiency. All of this is possible from the comfort and safety of the home, allowing for social distancing during the current global pandemic.
  2. Devicare is a specialty biotech company that focuses on chronic diseases. The company, founded in Barcelona, Spain, strives to develop solutions for the treatment process of chronic diseases. The company also offers a mentoring service with a team of experts and nursing staff. Often, chronic diseases involve a multitude of doctor visits and, in many cases, few answers. However, Devicare offers a cheaper and easier way of treating chronic diseases.
  3. Savana Medica provides a platform in which the clinical data for patients from healthcare organizations can be managed. EHRead, a form of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, technology, can obtain valuable health information that aids medical professionals in the diagnosis and treatment of patients. It is one of the top five health tech companies in Spain because this technology fosters quick and efficient access to records, which can help doctors understand a patient’s history of disease and illness.
  4. Genomcore is a company that has created an interface that stores a patient’s genetic information. Founded in 2015 in Barcelona, Spain, the platform that Genomcore provides for patient information can be efficiently shared with medical professionals when necessary. Genomcore helps foster more personalized treatment for patients and consequently the possibility of faster recovery from illness.
  5. Mediktor was founded in 2011 but has made a new name for itself due to increased use during the pandemic. Mediktor is an app that gives symptom assessments to patients via their own personal devices before even seeing a medical professional. In March 2020, the company released the COVID-19 symptom checker. With Mediktor, people were able to determine, with great accuracy, whether or not they needed to see a medical professional in relation to COVID-19 symptoms.

The top five health tech companies in Spain are instrumental to the world of healthcare today. While many people have restricted access to needed medical attention, these new technologies can change that.

– Grace Aprahamian
Photo: Flickr

, , , ,

The App to Help Refugees in Uganda

App to Help Refugees in Uganda
Uganda has been accepting refugees for many years. Unfortunately, these refugees have limited access to economic opportunity. That is where LevelApp comes in. The nonprofit Refunite created the app to help refugees in Uganda. The program creates small tasks for refugees to complete in exchange for payment. It is not a substitute for a regular income, but it provides some money on the side that refugees can save for the future. The work pays well too; a refugee may normally make around $1 a day, but the app gives them the potential to make up to $20 a day.

Uganda’s Refugee Crisis

Refugees have been seeking shelter in Uganda for many years now. Here are some facts about refugees in Uganda.

  • The refugee population in Uganda rose by 48 percent in the past year.
  • There are over 1.3 million refugees in Uganda.
  • Over 60 percent of those refugees are from South Sudan.
  • The South Sudanese are coming to Uganda to escape an oppressive government.
  • Many South Sudanese refugees are between 15 and 25 years old.
  • Almost 30 percent of refugees come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
  • The Congolese are escaping ethnic violence and an Ebola outbreak.

How LevelApp is Helping Refugees

Refugees need to be able to save money if they are to lift themselves out of poverty. The app helps women, who are important in local economies, by giving them tasks they can do from home. Almost 30 percent of users are women and they can use extra money in many beneficial ways. Some ways are to send kids to school, buy livestock and access health care, which might make them less dependent on foreign aid. Another important benefit is that by using this new technology, refugees learn new skills that they can use when they return home.

How LevelApp Works?

Refugees complete simple tasks like categorizing images and datasets. The more tasks they complete, the more money they make. They can download tasks and complete offline, which is important because many refugees do not have access to a consistent internet connection. Refugees can make almost $200 a month with this simple work. As of July 2019, LevelApp had around 1,500 users and the hope is that this number will grow.

The tasks are to help Refunite develop artificial intelligence. The basic tasks refugees complete, like labeling and mapping, help the AI learn. For Refunite, this is a win-win scenario because it is helping refugees climb out of poverty while developing AI.

Unexpected Benefits of LevelApp

While LevelApp is helping to lift refugees out of poverty, there are also some other positive effects. Using the app, refugees are beginning to learn English, which is an incredibly useful language to know. Also, through LevelApp, young people can new people. This is beneficial because a high number of refugees are young, and they are often stuck in limbo socially and economically. The youth often have difficulty making friends and progressing their careers. The app has also benefited the careers of young people by teaching them 21st-century skills that they can use when they return home.

LevelApp is helping refugees by providing an income that they normally would not have. It is a unique economic opportunity that greatly benefits refugees by providing them with 21st-century technological skills to use to access higher-paying jobs when they return home. The creator, Refunite, is also benefitting because the work refugees do for the company helps develop its artificial intelligence program. The company could easily develop this technology at home in the United States, but giving this opportunity to refugees is beneficial to combatting poverty. This app to help refugees in Uganda has created benefits that stretch beyond just poverty reduction and display the need for innovative solutions to global poverty.

– Gaurav Shetty
Photo: Flickr

, , , ,

This App Can Diagnose Birth Asphyxia

diagnose birth asphyxiaBirth asphyxia is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. It occurs when a child does not get enough oxygen before, during or after birth. However, an app under development could detect asphyxia in as little as 10 seconds. As such, this app has the potential to diagnose birth asphyxia and save the lives of children.

Causes and Symptoms of Asphyxia

Some causes of perinatal asphyxia include low blood pressure in the mother, placental abruption wherein the placenta separates from the uterus wall and the compression or entanglement of the umbilical cord. Additionally, birth asphyxia can be caused if the uterus does not fully relax. This is because it can impede blood flow to the placenta and thus the child.

As a result, the symptoms of children suffering from asphyxia include a weak or irregular heart rate, weak reflexes, being blue in color, lethargy and/or a soft cry.

This last symptom, a soft cry, is important. It is what Ubenwe, a Nigerian AI company, relies on to diagnose birth asphyxia. Moreover, Ubenwe plans to save children from debilitating illnesses resulting from brain damage caused by asphyxia, like blindness or deafness.

What is Ubenwe?

Ubenwe is a mobile app that uses proprietary AI technology to detect weak crying that can be a sign of asphyxia. In their words, the app can “analyze the amplitude and frequency patterns in the cry to provide a diagnosis of birth asphyxia.”

Ubenwe is an Igbo word that means “cry of a child.” In clinical trials, where the app tested 1,400 recordings of children crying, the app can diagnose birth asphyxia with a 95 percent accuracy rate. By recognizing this key symptom of asphyxia immediately and accurately, Ubenwe can save many lives.

Nigerian student Charles Onu and his research team invented the app at McGill University in Canada. Additionally, Onu is an associate fellow at the Royal Commonwealth Society. He is one of 12 fellows from around the world chosen to take part in the Jeanne Suave’ Leadership Program. This program brings together the world’s brightest young leaders to end global problems.

In 2017, Ubenwe was one of 141 teams from around the world to make it into the X Prize competition. This competition encourages inventors to apply AI technology when solving global problems. Subsequently, Ubenwe began research and development in 2012. In 2014, Ubenwe began pilot testing.

The Importance of Ubenwe

Currently, the main method to diagnose birth asphyxia requires drawing blood from the umbilical cord or the baby. However, this method is not suitable because 60 percent of women worldwide do not give birth in a hospital. Half of all deaths that occur in middle- to low-income nations could be prevented if the afflicted had had access to a hospital. Often, by the time the parents of a child are able to reach a hospital, the harm has already been done.

However, 95 percent of the developing world has a mobile phone. Ultimately, every one of those 95 percent could have access to Ubenwe and potentially diagnose birth asphyxia. With the majority of developing countries having access to mobile phones, they have increasing access to apps with the power to save lives.

– Sarah Bradley
Photo: Flickr