[Paper Review] Artificial Intelligence for Social Good

Gregory D. Hager, Ann W. Drobnis+9 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jan 16, 2019

Health, Environment, Cognitive AgingEnvironmental Science38 references68 citations

TL;DR

This paper reports on a public workshop (2016) co-sponsored by CCC, OSTP, and AAAI that examines how AI can advance social good across urban computing, health, environment, and public welfare, including challenges and opportunities.

ABSTRACT

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC), along with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), co-sponsored a public workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Social Good on June 7th, 2016 in Washington, DC. This was one of five workshops that OSTP co-sponsored and held around the country to spur public dialogue on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and to identify challenges and opportunities related to AI. In the AI for Social Good workshop, the successful deployments and the potential use of AI in various topics that are essential for social good were discussed, including but not limited to urban computing, health, environmental sustainability, and public welfare. This report highlights each of these as well as a number of crosscutting issues.

Motivation & Objective

• Motivate public dialogue on how AI and ML can advance social good.
• Identify successful deployments and potential applications across societal domains.
• Highlight challenges, barriers, and opportunities for AI to contribute to public welfare.

Proposed method

• Describe the workshop setup and participants.
• Synthesize discussions on topics like urban computing, health, environmental sustainability, and public welfare.
• Highlight crosscutting issues and considerations for responsible AI deployment.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What are the successful AI deployments for social good identified in the workshop?
• RQ2 What opportunities and challenges exist for applying AI to urban computing, health, environmental sustainability, and public welfare?
• RQ3 What crosscutting issues must be addressed to enable responsible and effective AI for societal benefits?
• RQ4 How can public dialogue and policy influence future AI research and deployment for social good?

Key findings

• AI has potential to impact urban computing, health, environment, and public welfare through deployments discussed at the workshop.
• Identified opportunities and challenges across domains guide future AI research and policy.
• Crosscutting issues (e.g., ethics, governance, privacy, scalability) were emphasized as critical for responsible AI for social good.
• The report serves as a foundation for aligning research agendas with societal needs and policy considerations.