Artificial Intelligence for Social Good in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Regional Landscape and 12 Country Snapshots

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Date
May 2020
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) advocates for building a shared understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI), its opportunities and applications, and its risks and the possible measures to mitigate them. Towards this end, working in collaboration with C Minds and with input from a group of regional experts, the IDB designed the fAIr LAC initiative to promote the responsible adoption of AI in order to improve the delivery of social services and create development opportunities. The aim is to reduce gaps and attenuate growing social inequalities in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

Working jointly with the private and public sectors, civil society, and academia, the fAIr LAC initiative leads the implementation of pilot projects for social good in response to identified public issues. Similarly, under its auspices, tools are created to guarantee minimum standards and strengthen the quality of data and models in order to mitigate potential risks associated with AI systems, while also fostering an informed public debate about its opportunities. One of the first steps of this initiative is to document and disseminate a greater amount of information on the progress made in the field of AI for the common good and on relevant use cases in the region. This report contributes to these objectives.

In light of the latent need to speed up the response to the social and environmental challenges in LAC, this report seeks to contribute to the discussion and the generation of knowledge about the adoption of AI in an ethical and responsible manner so that it may be used as a supporting tool to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.