From remotely controlled trucks delivering lifesaving aid in dangerous situations to analyzing mobile phone data to warn of mass evacuations, humanitarian workers are looking at how artificial intelligence (AI) can speed up and improve their operations.
We have been warned many times about the dangers of AI to aid agencies. Aid agencies face challenges in protecting often highly sensitive data and growing misinformation about their activities and beneficiaries.
But at this week’s AI for Good summit in Geneva, several humanitarian-focused exhibits highlighted the technology’s positive potential.
Parked in one corner of the vast hall of the PalExpo conference center was a huge white Sharp vehicle that resembled a giant Mars rover, equipped with cameras, sensors, and a landing pad for a drone on its roof.
The Ukrainian-made Sharp is an amphibious vehicle that can float on water, drive through swamps and flooded rivers on its giant wheels, and overcome obstacles up to one meter high.
The United Nations’ World Food Program is preparing to begin testing an AI-powered truck that can be remotely piloted across the most dangerous and difficult terrain to reach people in need.
“I think this could be a game changer,” said Bernhard Kowach, head of global accelerators and venture innovation at WFP. AFP.
He said the technology “should allow us to reach people we would never otherwise be able to reach.”
Impossible without AI
WFP is already deploying Sharp drivers to deliver aid in Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda.
However, after a number of heartbreaking deaths of drivers, the company ordered the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to help equip its vehicles with AI and other technologies to enable remote control, especially in dangerous terrain.
The idea is to set up a control room in a shipping container in a secure area, allowing humans to remotely control the vehicle during the last and most dangerous leg of the transport.
Armin Wedler, who is coordinating DLR’s Autonomous Humanitarian Emergency Assistance Device (AHEAD) project, said trials are being carried out in Germany and will be tested on the ground in Uganda in 2028.
He said as he stood next to the 7-foot-tall vehicle. AFP The researchers said they used “remote control techniques based on mathematics and old-fashioned…research,” but stressed that “we won’t be able to do everything without also using AI.”
Wedler said it was possible for vehicles to be fully autonomous, but stressed that in complex humanitarian situations, “humans need to be involved.”
“We’re not talking about driving on clean roads with no lanes. There are no roads,” he said, also describing scenes of desperately hungry people suddenly crowding into aid trucks.
“There is no AI autonomous algorithm that can safely handle this.”
‘Lifesaving’
While more than 200 exhibitors at the summit showcased everything from humanoid robots to bionic prosthetics to emotional companions, other humanitarian exhibits were more modest, with brochures detailing how AI tools are facilitating and streamlining operations.
In it, the United Nations Refugee Agency detailed a new legal virtual AI assistant for lawyers and legal officers representing refugees, enabling them to quickly determine the rights available within each country’s specific legal framework.
said Rebecca Moreno Jimenez, Chief Data Scientist at UNHCR Innovation Services. AFP He argued that filing cases more quickly and efficiently could “save the lives of many refugees.”
Another UN initiative, called Data Insights for Social and Humanitarian Action (DISHA), relies on partnerships with private actors such as Google and McKinsey to provide data and AI models to humanitarian organizations to speed up and improve disaster responses.
One project uses AI analysis of anonymized mobile phone data to identify mass movement during disasters, determining where people are fleeing and helping humanitarians respond appropriately.
The other uses AI to quickly analyze satellite images taken before and after disasters like the earthquake in Venezuela last month to determine damage to buildings.
The aim is to give humanitarian workers “accurate information early enough to make better decisions (and) to avoid going to the wrong place when there are people who need you elsewhere,” said DISHA product director Andreas Cortis. AFP.
