The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are approved by the UN’s 193 member countries. A UN Special Edition Report highlighted a considerable gap in achieving the SDG targets: Approximately 80% of the targets have deviated, stalled, or regressed, and just 15% of them are on track.

According to a new report from Google, titled AI in Action: Accelerating Progress Towards the Sustainable Development Goals, these challenges disproportionately impact low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the predecessor of the SDGs, saw considerable progress due to developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to do the same for implementing and advancing progress on the SDGs, according to the authors. It presents the opportunity for machines to learn, adapt, and perform tasks that have the potential to assist people, businesses, and organizations. 

Additionally, AI capabilities will continue to advance and create opportunities for innovation across domains. For example, AI techniques developed for image recognition in healthcare can also be applied to assess signs of disease in crops or moisture content in soil. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs highlights AI’s potential to meaningfully enable 134 or 79% of the 169 SDG targets.

The authors’ collaborative research, they wrote, confirms this identified more than 600 existing AI use cases supporting the SDG targets within the social impact sector — a 300% increase in the application of AI to address the SDGs since 2018

There has been a surge in the exploration, development, and deployment of AI solutions across sectors during the past five years, including the social impact sector. From 2021 to 2022, patents granted worldwide to those developing AI capabilities, applications, and systems increased by 63% and this number has increased more than 30-fold since 2010. In 2023, 149 foundation models were released, more than double the amount released in 2022. More than 65% of these were open source, compared to 44% in 2022 and 33% in 2021.

Delivering on and scaling AI’s potential for impact on the SDGs is a collaborative endeavor that requires work across companies, universities, nonprofits, governments, and individuals to have real-world impact, according to the authors. It is also important to acknowledge that AI is not a solution for every challenge or opportunity, but one part of a set of solutions. Successful AI deployment depends on several key enablers, including data, compute, and technical skills. 

The effectiveness of AI tools also requires grappling with responsible AI considerations, including ethical principles, risks, and data privacy. This emphasizes the need for co-creation to ensure AI-driven solutions are sensitive to and effective in addressing diverse social contexts and challenges. Ultimately, partnerships between government, academia, industry, and civil society are critical to leveraging the potential of AI to address the most pressing societal challenges and collectively benefit society, according to the authors.

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Source From Non Profit Times