The AI for Social Good Project – Strengthening AI Capabilities and Governing
Frameworks in Asia and the Pacific has recently passed the milestone of
onboarding two key government agencies.

The project is the latest collaboration between the Association of Pacific Rim
Universities (APRU), UN ESCAP, and Google.org, which commenced in mid-2021 and
will run until the end of 2023. Over the past year, meetings and workshops
have been held with government agencies from Thailand and Bangladesh. The
confirmed government partners to join the project are the Office of National
Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation Policy Council (NXPO) of
Thailand, in close collaboration with the National Electronics and Computer
Center (NECTEC) and the National Science and Technology Development Agency and
the Institute of Field Robotics (FIBO) under the King Mongkut’s University of
Technology Thonburi, and the Bangladesh Aspire to Innovate (a2i) Programme.
NXPO and a2i are affiliated with Thailand’s Ministry of Higher Education,
Science, Research and Innovation and the ICT Division and Cabinet Division of
Bangladesh, respectively.

The AI for Social Good multi-stakeholder network was initially set up in 2019,
among the first milestones being the creation of a platform that convenes
leading experts from the region to explore opportunities and challenges for
maximizing AI benefits for society. After these activities engaged a wide
range of policy experts and practitioners, the three project partners decided
that it was the right time to move on to the next stage of working directly
with government agencies to apply the insights generated through the
collaborative project to date. The aim has been to work with government
partners in Asia and the Pacific to grow sound and transparent AI ecosystems
that support sustainable development goals.

“Recognizing that AI offers transformative solutions for achieving the SDGs,
we are pleased to participate in the AI for Social Good Project to share
experience and research insights to develop enabling AI policy frameworks,”
said Dr. Kanchana Wanichkorn, NXPO’s Vice President.

NXPO identified ‘Poverty Alleviation’ and ‘Medicine and Healthcare’ as two
areas of need that are now tackled by two academic project teams. To alleviate
poverty and inequality, the Thai government has developed data-driven
decision-making systems to improve public access to state welfare programs.
The project, under the academic leadership of the Australia National
University (ANU) team, will focus on enhancing the human-centered design and
public accessibility of these technologies to support successful
implementation. In addition, research on AI for medical applications has
increased exponentially in the past few years in Thailand. However, the
progress in developing and applying AI from research to market in these areas
is relatively slow. To support and accelerate the use of AI in medicine and
healthcare, the expert team from the National University of Singapore (NUS)
will focus their research and analysis on identifying crucial bottlenecks and
gaps that impede the beneficial use of AI.

While the two Bangladesh projects both focus on the need for ‘Continuing and
Personalized Pregnancy Monitoring’ (to improve health outcomes during and
after birth), they are exploring different aspects of this key focus area for
the government of Bangladesh. Under the leadership of the team from NUS &
KAIST, the first project investigates challenges in perceptions and reception
of incorporating AI into continuous pregnancy monitoring systems. Under the
leadership of the University of Hawai‘i Team, the second project circles in on
technological issues of Bangladesh’s healthcare sector and their impacts on
AI-based data analysis and decision-making processes.

The academic integrity of both sets of country projects is overseen by Toni
Erskine, Professor of International Politics and Director of the Coral Bell
School of Asia Pacific Affairs at ANU. Erskine guides both the conception of
the research questions in collaboration with the government partners and the
delivery of the project outputs by providing support for the four academic
teams in developing their projects.

“It has been incredibly rewarding to lead a project that brings together such
an impressive, multidisciplinary group of researchers with government agencies
that are so passionate about finding solutions to crucial problems – ranging
from poverty alleviation to maternal health care,” Erskine said. She added
that “the process of working closely with government agencies from the outset
to discuss these problems and co-design research questions makes this project
unique and genuinely collaborative. I’m very proud to be part of it.”

The following steps for the ‘AI for Social Good Project: Strengthening AI
Capabilities and Governing Frameworks in Asia and the Pacific’ project will be
to review and discuss the first complete drafts of the research papers by the
four academic teams at a workshop in January. The partner government agencies
from Bangladesh and Thailand will attend the workshop. Workshops with both
government teams will also follow the presentation of final papers in the
second quarter of 2023. To mark the project's conclusion, a summit with all
participants in the project will be held in mid-2023 at the Australia National
University.

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www.apru.org

Our #ai in Bangladesh project is moving onto the next step where we will work directly with #government agencies to investigate challenges in perceptions and reception of incorporating AI into continuous #pregnancy monitoring systems. Olivia Jensen Cornelius Kalenzi Nathaniel Tan APRU, Google.org, UN ESCAP

URL: The next stage: APRU-Google-UN ESCAP AI for Social Good Project now working directly with government agencies - Bloomberg