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Are we talking too much about artificial intelligence? Possibly, but the U.N.’s tech envoy says it’s not because AI is unimportant — just the opposite. It’s because so many conversations are happening all at once, in all kinds of directions, that setting the rules of the road may become impossible.
Also in today’s edition: The Gates Foundation’s Trevor Mundel on a new AI initiative, and Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, WHO’s regional director for Africa, discusses last year’s aid cuts.
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Can AI be governed in a multilateral setting, or should the private sector take the lead? Some combo of the two? For that matter, can a technology moving at supersonic Silicon Valley speed even be governed?
These are questions that Amandeep Singh Gill, the United Nations secretary-general’s tech envoy, grapples with every day. The challenge, he said in an interview for Devex’s new special edition podcast series, Global progress in the AI era, is to connect the relevant players without trying to straitjacket AI into a one-size-fits-all governance approach.
“One of our goals for this year is to work with the private sector to understand how they are applying AI governance on a day-to-day basis [because] sometimes the national legislation is missing,” he told my colleague Catherine Cheney, adding: “I think we need more diverse participation in innovation. Innovation, particularly with the development perspective, cannot be driven from a few geographies.”
Indeed, that’s the primary concern for the global south — not just that AI could siphon away jobs, but that lower-income countries won’t even get a say in how this unbridled new revolution is being shaped.
“The intense feeling [is] that we don’t want to be left out of this technology,” Gill said. “We missed the first Industrial Revolution, the second one, the third one. We don’t want to miss this one.”
That’s why the top U.N. official is a proponent — unsurprisingly — of a U.N. initiative succinctly named the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, which Gill said has a roughly equal balance between global north and global south countries among its 40 members.
Of course, not everyone’s a fan of giving a slow-moving bureaucracy such as the U.N. a say in regulating AI, but Gill said it can help unify the current patchwork of conversations.
“I think governance is not only a brake on risk, but it can be — if it's proactive, science-led — can be an accelerator of opportunities,” he said. “So, for instance, to identify where AI can do the most good in the fastest possible time, or anticipating some of the things that will make development challenging — job displacement, for example, what’s coming around the corner? So far, we've only had ad hoc work on this.”
Read: UN tech envoy talks AI governance and the private sector
+ For our latest podcast series, Global progress in the AI era, you can find the episodes here. Upcoming episodes will include a chat with GiveDirectly CEO Nick Allardice on how AI can be used to facilitate cash transfer aid.
Artificial intelligence was the centerpiece of a major summit last week in India, where experts also stressed the importance of including the global south in the technology’s evolution — even if it means taking a deep breath to slow that evolution down to get it right.
Errors generated by AI tools being rolled out too quickly could lead to a loss of trust and “a tremendous deceleration” of AI development, warned Trevor Mundel, president of global health at the Gates Foundation, urging donors to take “a reflective and slower approach.”
Mundel was speaking at a panel where he highlighted the launch of a new initiative called Evidence for AI in Health, or EVAH. The Gates Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, and Wellcome will each contribute $20 million to the initiative, which will support locally led evaluations of AI health tools in low- and middle-income countries, Devex contributing reporter Catherine Davison tells me.
The joint investment will help fill a critical evidence gap on the effectiveness of AI tools in real-world health settings, said Charlotte Watts, executive director of solutions at Wellcome. EVAH will focus on measuring impact, acceptability, and the ability of new AI tools to integrate into existing health systems, helping to guide policymakers on adopting and scaling the most cost-effective solutions.
Initiatives such as EVAH can also help “separate the hype from the reality,” said Iqbal Dhaliwal, global executive director of The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. As funding cuts squeeze national health budgets, creating an evidence base for AI tools can give governments “clarity about where to invest their scarce dollars,” he added.
Related: Low-resource nations may leapfrog wealthier ones in using AI for health
+ What else happened at the India AI Impact Summit? We were on the ground for the highs and lows. Stay tuned for a special edition newsletter hitting your inbox in just a few hours.
It was a double whammy last year for many African countries, which were hit by U.S. foreign aid cuts, all while responding to over 100 health outbreaks on the continent.
Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi became the new regional director of the World Health Organization’s office for Africa at the beginning of July, in the eye of the storm.
“Did the [aid] cuts affect us? Definitely,” he said during a recent Devex Pro Briefing, noting that in some countries, there will be disruptions of up to 60% in areas such as essential health services, maternal care, vaccinations, surveillance, and workforce training.
Janabi said there’s a cure: cost-effective interventions — with a focus on disease prevention rather than more expensive responses.
“The savior of my continent is investing in primary health care — is investing in universal health coverage. This will rescue us,” he said. “It’s always cheaper to prevent it. It’s always cheaper to intervene within 72 hours.”
But perhaps the most important component is health sovereignty — and moving away from a model where the global north parachutes in with its solutions
“Last year was a wake-up call for all our member states that donor-dependent health budgets are not something which is very sustainable,” Janabi said. “At the end of the day, our member states — we are responsible for our health, so we have to take charge.”
Watch the briefing: WHO’s Africa chief on why health system reform is a marathon (Pro)
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The Trump administration is also trying to bolster country sovereignty by signing bilateral health deals with various African nations, but the devil can be in the details — or lack thereof.
“The U.S. shift toward bilateral health assistance agreements and country ownership represents important progress. The old model of U.S.-driven global health programs often sidelined local expertise and priorities,” writes Brendan Foley of the Harvard Kennedy School in an opinion piece for Devex.
But he points out that one piece of the puzzle is conspicuously absent: lenacapavir, or LEN, a breakthrough HIV prevention injectable.
While it’s touted in the administration’s “America First” global health strategy “as proof of U.S. innovation and leadership,” Foley writes that in practice, “$11 billion in U.S. health aid is now flowing through 15 bilateral agreements that fail to include a single HIV prevention target.”
“Beyond cursory mentions in the Eswatini and Mozambique press releases, the game-changing drug is nowhere to be found in the deals meant to define the future of U.S. health aid.”
Historically, HIV treatments such as antiretrovirals, which are cheaper, have been prioritized, but Foley urged African governments to see the long-term benefits of LEN because failing to invest in prevention today “is fiscally shortsighted.”
“National governments must act now,” he argues. “Civil society leaders from Mozambique to Nigeria should seek to influence the implementation planning period to set concrete LEN uptake targets, making the case to both finance ministers and health ministers that prevention investments today reduce treatment costs tomorrow.”
Opinion: Where is HIV prevention drug lenacapavir in ‘America First’ health deals?
Related: Alarm bells ring as US rolls out transactional strings for health deals (Pro)
Government-allied fighters in South Sudan killed more than a dozen civilians after luring them with a false food-aid call, according to two survivors of the attack. [AP News]
Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus stepped down from Bangladesh’s interim leadership after 18 months to resume his work in the nonprofit sector as the country transitions back to elected rule. [Times of India]
Global human rights are being systematically undermined by “rule of force,” U.N. chief António Guterres warned in his final in-person address to the Human Rights Council. [Al Jazeera]
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