United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

Toni Erskine is academic lead for a major collaboration on 'AI for Social Good', uniting the UN Economic and Social Council for the Asia-Pacific (UN ESCAP), Google, and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities. Toni, in collaboration with HMI staff, will assist in building out the multi-stakeholder network and policy insight briefs developed from the AI for Social Good Project and Summit. For example:

• Bring together a network of government agencies from the Asia and Pacific region planning to develop: a) national AI governance frameworks to support the responsible use of AI for Social Good, and b) capabilities to leverage AI in priority domains.

• Collaborate with these regulators and agencies to identify specific needs and existing gaps impacting on their plans and by drawing on academic, industry and other experts, from the established network, develop specific research to address these.

• Support agencies and their key stakeholders in the application of research insights to develop enabling AI policy frameworks and build AI capabilities for social good.

The aim of this collaboration is to achieve real transformative impact by actively supporting government agencies and key stakeholders in the development of country specific AI governance frameworks and national capabilities to empower transparent ecosystems to develop AI solutions that tackle high-priority societal challenges.

We expect that interest to participate in, and gain support through the project, will come from a number of government agencies within Asia.