Artificial Intelligence and Sustainable Development Goals

Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and disruptive digital technologies have opened the doors to the application of AI-enabled systems to tackle global challenges. As human beings of 21st century we are facing extraordinary challenges in our day-to-day lives and the whole world around us. In order to recognize and tackle these global challenges, the United Nations adopted the UN 2030 Agenda with the aim to transform our world. At the heart of these agenda, there are 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.” To the present time, we have not been fully successful to make sense of these global challenges, neither to solve them. But in the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 which conceptualize rapid changes in technology, we are seeing the emergence of disruptive technologies and trends such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) which is giving us a little ray of hope to point out these global challenges and seek to solve them. The new concept of AI for social good (AI4SG), is gaining a lot of attention in today’s world, as artificial intelligence-based solutions have shown great potentials in tackling important social, environmental, and public health challenges that exist today. One of the applications of AI4SG, is the potentials of AI for the UN sustainable development goals which is too great to be neglected. However, there are risks associated with application of AI for SDGs, that the unchecked and unregulated development and application of AI systems might result in diminishing progress toward the UN sustainable development goals. The aim of my thesis is to provide a deeper understanding of the contribution of AI systems to the achievement of sustainable development goals, which does not only consider the potential applications of AI for achieving SDGs, but also consider the risks of AI in the context of sustainable development goals.