Abstract: ‘AI for Good’ is a catchall term that has largely come to mean mitigation of some of the negative aspects of AI systems that operate at scale: bias, lack of privacy, lack of explanations. What is often ignored is the capability of AI models to create positive impact in meaningful ways. Specifically in India, where severe resource constraints are juxtaposed with massive data generated by a large and tremendously diverse population, the potential for social good that is driven by AI-generated insights is very high and largely untapped for various reasons. In this talk, I describe our efforts to make a dent in this area, with specific examples of our work in public health and primary education. I hope to convince the audience of the rich potential of AI for Good in these contexts, and to convey how India can stand as an exemplar for AI applications in the development sector across the Global South.

About the Speaker:  Alpan Raval is the Chief Scientist, AI/ML at the Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence. He has previously led applied AI teams at LinkedIn and Amazon and worked as a Member of the Technical Staff at D E Shaw Research. Earlier in his career, he was a tenured faculty member at the Claremont Colleges in California, USA, where he taught mathematics and computational biology. With over 24 years of experience in applied AI, Alpan has worked in multiple AI application domains, including healthcare, agriculture, social networks, computational advertising, and drug discovery.