Fair ground rules for artificial intelligence
GIZ and its partners are harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence (AI). To ensure that everyone benefits, they are committed to ethical standards and open data in their use of AI.
How can countries in the Global South harness the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) instead of being left behind by the technology? The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH is striking a balance between progress and fairness and incorporating ethical responsibility into the use of AI.
That’s the focus of FAIR Forward – Artificial Intelligence for All, an initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). This supports open and fair access to AI technologies in partner countries in Africa and Asia.
Improved job prospects through AI skills
One focus of FAIR Forward is on helping people to develop their technical know-how on AI. GIZ’s online and offline AI training courses have now reached more than 100,000 learners. For example, GIZ works with local partners to run AI bootcamps for women in South Africa, Ghana, Uganda and Rwanda. The young women who take part gain in-depth knowledge of data science, machine learning and AI applications, improving their prospects on the labour market. The bootcamps therefore contribute to digital education – and to gender equality in a technology sector that has been very male-dominated to date.
In addition to promoting local skills, FAIR Forward fosters fair participation in global AI development. The programme is supporting the creation of voice-enabled AI applications in local languages in India, Indonesia and several African countries. This is based on the use of open data – freely available language datasets in this instance. Philipp Olbrich, a FAIR Forward advisor, is clear on the importance of this aspect in particular: ‘Many applications support only English, but not Hindi, Marathi, Swahili or Kinyarwanda. FAIR Forward is filling this gap with solutions in local languages.’ This will give millions of people easier access to digital services in health care, administration and other areas.
