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Dodge through have stage recording sessions, AI refresher courses, gizmos obstacles, people walking around with shiny green disco headphones blasting UN team talks into your ears, and you can rest easy. But you can find it in the Networking Zone, in a circular space called UFOTECH that looks more like a lazy Susan you’d encounter at a Chinese restaurant than a networking bench designed for work.
These are AI for Good Sumitorganized by the United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU), where representatives of private and public organizations try to discuss how to use technology to benefit, not harm, people.
While Silicon Valley leaders and AI laboratory leaders are testifying to lawmakers in Washington about the dangers of governance, and the White House is cracking down on chip export controls, the UN AI for Good Summit – now in its 10th year – focuses on the best intentions.
“It is our belief that artificial intelligence, used in the right way, can help solve the problems facing humanity – from hunger to disease to global warming,” said Doreen Bogdan-Martin, general secretary of the ITU, in a keynote speech at the main session of the conference. “Today, this idea is being tested, in addition to the challenges that AI brings, although we are trying to use it well.”
What good—and what good does it do for humanity—was the question that arose throughout the meeting, which spread across a 106,000-square-meter convention center on the edge of Geneva’s airport. Sessions were supported by a growing concern that the deployment of unaccountable people by unchecked regimes and deeply flawed institutions is already exacerbating global inequality and undermining human rights.
For some on the front lines, the utopian veneer of technology is long gone. Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Giulio Coppi, head of human resources at the development group Access Now, criticized the reliance of the public and the public sector on big technology. “We need to end the age of innocence,” says Coppi, and urge corporations to stop treating tech companies “like your best friends.” He points to a decade of obscure, multimillion-dollar contracts backed by federal funds. “You can’t define what’s inside your technology, because it’s changing,” he warns.
Coppi’s opposition paled in comparison to others: Palestinian activists he built a stage In a keynote speech by Amazon’s chief technology officer Werner Vogels, he said that the company’s technology was being used by Israel against the Palestinians, before being released in bundles.
“When we talk about AI, we like to entertain, we like to enjoy it,” said Vijay Janapa Reddi, an engineering professor at Harvard University, at the conference during the briefing. “Bad things don’t really happen.” The problem, he says, is that “good” is too vague to be used by an engineer. “When you’re an engineer, good doesn’t mean anything. I can’t make you good. A plane that flies for five minutes is not good.”
Many international debates surrounding AI are now framed in terms of privilege: Who can use the models, who can buy the chips, and who is excluded from the computing economy. This is one of the reasons why the Trump administration has it established, then promotedexport controls on advanced AI models, and China has he says he is thinking making its open models heavier than open ones. Improving access and cutting off poor countries can leave them dependent on foreign platforms and standards.
In the field of AI tools and the spread of digital platforms, the speakers argued that computing is not a technical problem, but a social problem. “If we mean good AI, which means counting all, we have to realize that this is (about) development, not technology,” says Syed Munir Khasru, chairman of the Institute for Policy, Advocacy, and Governance. Others have pointed out that major languages remain firmly anchored in English, making it easier for smaller, local LLMs to run on cheaper hardware if AI wants to help people move beyond the more affluent markets.
