IGF 2025 Lightning Talk #68 Towards a fairer and more efficient AI: shedding light on da

AI technologies are increasingly being applied to address various Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) challenges, such as environmental issues, transparency, and inequality. Many of these initiatives involve collaborations between the public and private sectors and civil society organizations. These partnerships often hinge on a crucial resource for AI systems: data. We propose a lightning talk in which we share the experience and projects of Open Data Charter and Development Gateway in relation to data quality and its impact on artificial intelligence initiatives. The quality of the data that feeds these projects will be a decisive factor for the deployment of AI to be efficient and fair. The Open Data Charter (ODC) is conducting research to identify AI projects and data needs in the Global Majority, with a specific focus on agriculture and health. This work explores how AI is applied to development challenges and examines the resulting data requirements. Our findings highlight the significant role data plays in enabling AI to address critical issues, emphasizing the need for attention and investment in how data is collected, processed, and utilized. In addition, we are working on a research project that is nearing completion, with the support of TrustLaw from Thomson Reuters, in which we are analyzing how data is contemplated and regulated in AI regulations and strategies in Latin America, Africa and Asia. And we are also conducting a series of blogs with evidence on the synergy between open data and AI systems (e.g.: https://medium.com/opendatacharter/using-open-data-to-improve-ai-initia…) Development Gateway: An IREX Venture is working across sectors, including education, health, and agriculture, to build interoperable systems. These systems require standards and governance protocols to bring datasets together effectively, and provide the building blocks for the pool of data future AI models will need to be trained efficiently. From a technologist's perspective, DG’s lightning talk will demystify the human, organizational, and software components of interoperability that raise challenges, as well as opportunities, to building a vast pool of reliable, quality data that can feed into algorithmic models.

How will you facilitate interaction between onsite and online speakers and attendees? As we hope to have small group discussions, we would do the same for both online and offline participants via Zoom or a similar platform. We will require online participants to share their main points of discussion just as offline participants do. How will you design the session to ensure the best possible experience for online and onsite participants? The presentation will be streamed online for everyone to see at the same time and an online moderator will be ensuring that the questions posed online receive attention and are shared during the session. At the time for participants to share their input, we will showcase the online participants in a screen for in-person participants to see and will share the offline presentations via Zoom also. Please note any complementary online tools/platforms you plan to use to increase participation and interaction during the session. We plan to start the session with a poll of simple, closed-ended questions to the audience, to find out what sector they come from and what their interests or expectations are. The panelists will answer trigger questions, make reflections and talk about their projects. Finally, there will be time for questions from the audience, final conclusions and call to action.