A New Ethical AI Adoption Toolkit for Humanitarian Actors
On this special short episode of Humanitarian AI Today, guest host Brent Phillips sits down with Tigmanshu Bhatnagar, a lecturer at University College London (UCL), and Hamdan Albishi, a UCL MSc student in AI for Sustainable Development. Tigmanshu and Hamdan discuss a toolkit they are developing, designed to empower non-technical humanitarian actors to build their own ethical AI projects. They walk through the toolkit's four-phase process—Reflection, Scoping, Feasibility Assessment, and Development—which guides users from an initial idea to a simulated, ethically-sound AI project without needing deep technical expertise.
Toolkit users define a problem, identify beneficiaries, and consider potential unintended harm. The tool presents existing use cases and projects in the same problem area to educate the user. The toolkit helps users assess project feasibility based on resources and regulations. It can also suggest publicly available humanitarian datasets and helps check them for completeness and bias to avoid unintended harm. The tool suggests appropriate technical solutions, generates a project with embedded ethical guardrails, and runs it in a simulated environment to validate its accuracy and impact before real-world deployment
This initiative emerged from a UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub (UKHIH) and Elrha-funded project, which found that humanitarian organizations, despite their commitment, faced a steep learning curve in creating tangible AI solutions. The toolkit addresses AI adoption challenges and aims to help humanitarian actors develop responsible AI projects for users, regardless of their technical background.
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André Heller on Piloting Agentic AI and Client-facing Applications at Signpost
André Heller, Director of Signpost, led by the International Rescue Committee, updates Humanitarian AI Today podcast producer Brent Phillips on Signpost’s latest AI publications and research findings. André and Brent discuss a new Signpost paper covering their work piloting agentic AI and client-facing applications and touch on funding-connected complications caused by the aid funding crisis. This short episode was recorded to lay groundwork prior to recording a more formal interview featuring André and Mala Kumar, Head of Impact with Humane Intelligence, covering Signpost’s latest work in greater detail.
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Till Trojer and Rory Crew on Cash Assistance and AI Strategy: Insights from HEKS and CALP
Till Trojer, AI Officer at HEKS/EPER (Swiss Church Aid), joins Humanitarian AI Today guest host Rory Crew, Technical Advisor on Data and Digitalization with the CALP Network which works on increasing the quality, quantity, and impact of humanitarian cash and voucher assistance, to discuss how mid-sized aid organizations are developing and implementing their AI strategies, and the impact of the aid funding crisis on the sector.
Till's role at HEKS/EPER involves helping the organization use AI responsibly, building trust, and ensuring ethical standards by understanding the context and listening to the concerns and needs of teams. Till provided insights into HEKS/EPER’s AI approach, explaining how AI is integrated into their broader digital transformation strategy rather than being treated as a separate entity. He also shared his views on AI as a catalyst for deeper discussions about existing systems, infrastructure, and data hosting dependencies, prompting a critical re-evaluation of reliance on big tech companies.
Rory highlighted the timely nature of the conversation, as both cash assistance and AI offer the potential for greater efficiency—a desperate need for the sector amidst calls to do more with less. Both guests emphasized the importance of ensuring that AI solutions are grounded in the communities they serve and avoid the "graveyard of humanitarian pilots" by planning for sustainability and community buy-in from the outset. Ultimately, their vision for futuristic AI centers on systems that prioritize ethics, accountability, and empowerment, refusing unethical tasks and ensuring that communities remain in the driving seat of their own development.
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A Critical Discussion on Assessing Humanitarian AI Use Cases
On this special Humanitarian AI Today episode, focusing on assessing evidence on the effectiveness of humanitarian AI use cases, Alexandra Pittman, CEO of Impact Mapper, Suzy Madigan, Responsible AI Lead with Care International, Gary Forster, CEO of Publish What You Fund, and Linda Raftree and Quito Tsui from the Meryl Tech initiative discuss challenges associated with assessing the effectiveness of humanitarian aid activities and activities incorporating applications of artificial intelligence.
The discussion touches on challenges associated with collecting, mapping, measuring and assessing data on humanitarian needs and aid activities and activities incorporating uses of AI, and on fundamental questions surrounding crisis contexts, stakeholder engagement, operations, reporting, data transparency, uses of technology and AI, and limits on what the sector can actually deliver around impact.
This podcast panel discussion was originally recorded in 2024 to help inform an accompanying discussion focusing on real-world AI use cases and their impact on humanitarian action co-produced by Humanitarian AI Today, the UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub and Elrha for a special six-part panel discussion series critically examining different aspects of humanitarian applications of artificial intelligence.
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Valentine Pistorozzi on Advances in AI and Boldcode’s Reporter AI Project
In this short Humanitarian AI Today podcast episode Valentine Pistorozzi speaks with Brent Phillips about Boldcode, new projects in the pipeline, and changes in the way that AI applications are being built. Brent and Valentine speak in detail about Boldcode’s https://reporterai.org/ project and about technical aspects of humanitarian AI applications. This interview was recorded as a test in November 2024 to experiment with a short 15 minute interview format for a special series of new Humanitarian AI Today podcast episodes to be published on Mondays.
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Om Humanitarian AI Today
Humanitarian AI Today is the leading AI for Good podcast series focusing on humanitarian applications of artificial intelligence. We interview leaders, developers and innovators advancing humanitarian applications of AI from across the tech and humanitarian communities. The series is produced by the Humanitarian AI meetup.com community, linking local groups in Cambridge, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Toronto, Montreal, London, Paris, Berlin, Oslo, Geneva, Zurich, Bangalore, Tel Aviv and Tokyo.
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