Excellencies,
distinguished guests,
Madam Mary Ellen Randall, President of the IEEE,
Ladies and gentlemen.
It is a pleasure to welcome you to this workshop on the GenAI for Good Challenge, and to thank our partners at IEEE,
and in particular IEEE Humanitarian Technologies,
for the exceptional collaboration that has made this initiative possible.
The GenAI for Good Challenge is not a traditional hackathon.
From its inception, the objective was both to identify practical solutions to real development challenges, and create pathways for their deployment in countries where they can make a tangible difference.
In many ways, this represents a new model for innovation.
Too often, promising digital and AI solutions stop at the proof-of-concept stage, performing well in demonstrations but never reaching the communities they were intended to serve.
Through the GenAI for Good Challenge, ITU and IEEE challenged innovators to consider how Generative AI could be implemented.
We had 318 applications from 75 countries around the world,
and the outcome has been extraordinary. We have witnessed the emergence of solutions addressing critical challenges in health,
agriculture, climate resilience and public service delivery.
We have mobilized a truly global community of innovators,
and shown Generative AI can become a practical tool for advancing development objectives.
Moreover, in addition to the solutions that have emerged, important lessons have been learned. Innovators have confronted the realities governments and development practitioners face every day.
- How do we deploy AI responsibly?
- How do we ensure solutions remain affordable and sustainable?
- How do we operate in environments where connectivity, computing resources and technical expertise may be limited?
- How do we build trust among institutions and citizens?
- And perhaps most importantly, how do we move from a successful pilot to meaningful and lasting impact?
These questions are often absent from traditional innovation competitions, yet they ultimately determine whether a solution succeeds or fails.
One of the clearest lessons emerging from this Challenge is that impact occurs when innovation is combined with partnerships,
local ownership, institutional capacity and a clear understanding of development priorities.
This lesson is familiar to all of us working in digital development.
For many years, ITU and its members have worked to expand connectivity, strengthen digital infrastructure and support countries in their digital transformation journeys. Generative AI presents an opportunity to build upon these foundations.
Let me add that, to make the most of that potential, it is essential that solutions remain open source. That’s why we’ve made it a strategic pillar of ITU’s development work. Initiatives such as GovStack Global, the Open Source Ecosystem Enabler programme and our growing work on open source artificial intelligence, are helping countries build ecosystems to sustain digital solutions.
We are also developing GENIE.AI as an open-source framework to help governments deploy trustworthy Generative AI solutions,
and provide a pathway through which innovations can be adapted, deployed and sustained, innovations like those identified by the GenAI for Good Challenge, so everything is coming together.
The GenAI for Good Challenge demonstrates what becomes possible when communities of innovators share a common goal.
I look forward to hearing from the winning teams, learning from the experiences to be shared throughout this workshop and continuing our collective journey toward a future where Generative AI works for everyone, everywhere.
