EAI4GD · Exploring the Ethics of AI for Global Development

Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers a new way to approach the seemingly intractable challenges of Global Development, mobilising unprecedented amounts of data and generating insights from previously unused sources (e.g. big data, mobile phone records). Unlike traditional development projects, AI systems can scale rapidly while requiring very little on-the-ground implementation. However, the ethical implications of incorporating AI into Global Development are not well-defined. Therefore, this project seeks to collect empirical data about the ethical questions that arise when AI is part of a development project. It will involve a case study of the AI Cookstoves Project, an on-going collaboration between the ADAPT Centre in Ireland and Makerere University in Uganda. The AI Cookstoves Project takes a familiar problem - the use of woodburning cookstoves - and approaches it with a combination of engineering, community input, and AI-generated design suggestions. In doing so, it raises ethical questions about development and AI, including whether the goal of energy efficiency for the stoves is outweighed by the energy costs of running a generative AI model, and how the inclusion of AI models affects the knowledge hierarchy among stakeholders with different kinds of knowledge. At the same time, the researcher will seek to understand how AI and Global Development experts conceive of the potential for AI in development through in-depth interviews of experts and participant observation at public presentations and working group discussions about AI, ethics, and global development, in Ireland and Uganda. This work brings a distinctly global lens to the question of AI ethics. In this way, it aims to speak to the Sustainable Development Goals for inclusive economic growth (#8) and reduced inequality (#10). It also seeks to provide policymakers with a new approach to AI ethics that is grounded in actual examples of AI in practice.""