2017 ICT4D Conference

Conversational agents (chatbots) and artificial intelligence (AI) are receiving major investment from tech giants Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft. Important advances have been made that are improving the usefulness of these innovations and yet applications such as Google Assistant, M, Watson, Alexa, and Cortana are still primarily being used to solve the problems of the world's most affluent people.

This talk will focus on the emerging application and opportunity space of chatbots and AI in achieving the SDGs. 

I will profile 7 different applications of these technologies and offer ideas for how they can all be applied to further the SDGs. I'll also share some of the current R&D of my company, Arifu, one example of a chatbot product leveraging AI to deliver personalized learning over any mobile device, now reaching 430,000 people in Kenya and Tanzania. Some of the specific applications to be discussed will include personalized education, predictive data products (propensity scoring, credit scoring), and attaining a deeper understanding of the interests, needs, and behavior among those we all aim to serve.

This session is contributing to Dalberg’s track focusing speakers who are actively engaged in the DFI ecosystem, who are engaged at the intersection of the DFI ecosystem and another sector (Ag-DFI, Health-DFI, and WaSH-DFI), and whose primary interest is in data and how DFI will generate data that could be harnessed within DFI and also other spaces.