AI for Good: How the UN uses AI to advance human rights
Across agencies, the UN is implementing AI tools to help promote peace, security and human rights while spearheading the global conversation around AI governance.By the book
Six-year-old Ari in Jamaica has learning difficulties which make it difficult for him to study, but now AI technology is converting existing textbooks into interactive formats personalised to his needs.“The real impact is what this means for children,” Pia Rebello Britto, UNICEF’s Global Director of Education and Adolescent Development, told UN News. “There are countless more examples like Ari’s, showing what becomes possible when digital learning is designed to reach every child.”For UNICEF, implementing AI means putting the communities it supports at the centre of its technology development process.The agency worked with advocacy groups to design its Accessible Digital Textbooks for All (ADT) initiative, which tackles a persistent barrier in global education: inaccessible learning materials for the nearly 240 million children worldwide living with disabilities.While the programme existed before AI’s rapid rise, today’s AI-assisted version now operates in 17 countries, reaching nearly two million children, with a goal of expanding to 50 countries by 2030. Six countries have already joined this year.Putting a brake on methaneMethane is one of the gases that is contributing to global warming.“Everybody – every person, citizen – anywhere in the world who is concerned about climate change must have an interest in slowing down global warming, and fixing methane leaks is the emergency brake,” said UNEP Climate Change Division Director Martin Krause.
