“AI for Good”, but good for Whom? Good PR for big tech corporations? Good for laundering accountability? Good for the atrocities the AI industry is aiding and abetting? Good for boosting the very technologies that are widening inequity, destroying the environment, and concentrating power and resources in the hands of few? Good for AI acceleration completely void of any critical thinking on its societal implications? Good for jumping on the next AI trend regardless of its merit, usefulness, or functionality? Good for displaying and promoting commercial products and parading robots? Good for the ITU, the summit organisers, and their high-cavalier guests to pat each other on the back and reassure each other that they’re “saving the world”?
I was invited to deliver a keynote speech at the ‘AI for Good Summit’ this year, and I arrived at the venue with an open mind and hope for change. With a title “AI for social good: the new face of technosolutionism” and an abstract that clearly outlines the need to question what “good” is and the importance of confronting power, it wouldn’t be difficult to guess what my keynote plans to address. I had hoped my invitation to the Summit was a beginning of engaging in critical self-reflection for the community. However, my experience at the Summit has made me realise that the Summit is not only a ‘faux good’, but it is also a threat to freedom of speech, industry accountability, and genuine social good.
This is what happened: Two hours before I was to take Centre Stage for my keynote, the organisers approached me without prior warning and informed me that they had flagged my talk and it needs substantial altering. Over the next hour, I had to sit in intense negotiations where the only choices I was given were to either change the keynote into a fireside chat with no visuals or to remove some apparently objectionable items from my slide. Thinking that it would be better to deliver some of the message than none, I continued with this charade where we went through my slide deck reviewing each slide and removing anything that mentions “Gaza” or “Palestine” or “Israel” and editing the word “genocide” to “war crimes” untill a single slide that called for “No AI for War Crimes” remained. That is where I drew the line. I was then told that displaying that slide was not acceptable and I had to withdraw, a decision they reversed about 10 minutes later and shortly before I got on the Centre Stage.
This is a modified version of my slide deck that shows which parts were censored. You can download the original and censored versions at the end of this post.
Beyond this chilling censorship, the utter lack of professionalism is also alarming. One would expect the conference organisers to do their due diligence to understand the area of expertise and values of a potential speaker before extending an invitation. I submitted the abstract for my talk over a month prior to the Summit which clearly indicated the kind of topics I planned to cover. I also submitted the slides for my talk a week prior to the event. Yet, it was literally just 2 hours prior to my keynote talk that I was approached by ITU representatives and Summit organisers and asked to either alter my talk or withdraw myself as a speaker. Changing the course and tone of my talk last minute caused me extreme stress. It also shows lack of professionalism from the organisers, and it brings into question why this was done at the last possible moment in an event where everything else seemed to be run with utmost planning and efficiency.
The general global trend towards authoritarianism, censorship and silencing of academics, journalists alike that stand up for fundamental rights, the rule of law, and justice is difficult to deal with in the current climate. But for a Summit that supposedly claims that “AI for Good remains firmly aligned with the collective priorities of the international community" and “[…] it is our responsibility to ensure that no one is left behind”, to then censor an invited keynote speaker that advocates for confronting difficult issues and engaging in self-reflection, is doubly disheartening.
Following my experience of this blatant censorship and looking at the general theme of the Summit, it is clear that the priority of ITU and the Summit organisers is to cultivate the interest of big tech and Summit sponsors and their version of good at any cost. Looking at this year’s keynote and centre stage speakers, an overwhelming number of them come from industry, including Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon. Out of the 82 centre stage speakers, almost half (37) made industry the most represented of all, while only five were from academia and just three came from civil society organisations. This means that what “good” means is overwhelmingly shaped, defined, and actively curated by the tech industry that inherently holds invested interest in societal uptake of AI regardless of its risk or harm. This is beyond concerning and a cause for ITU and Summit organisers to either rethink if their idea of “good” continues to be defined by those who stand to gain from selling products or the general public and civil society and rights groups who tend to pay heavy price when AI technologies go wrong (and they always do).
Any ‘AI for Good’ initiative that serves as a stage that platforms big tech, while censoring anyone that dares to point out the industry’s complacency in enabling and powering genocide and other atrocity crimes is also complicit. In the current climate, such censorship might be expected, especially from conservative outlets. However, for a UN summit whose brand is founded upon doing good, to pressure a Black woman academic to curb critique of powerful corporations — including Microsoft, Google, Meta — should make it clear that the Summit is only Good for the industry and that it is business and not people that ITU wants to protect.
Acknowledgement: my deepest gratitude and solidarity with the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) and the Palestinian leadership of the global Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement for remaining a source of hope and inspiration. I am grateful for AIAL lab members, especially Harshvardhan Pandit, Riccardo Angius, Maribeth Rauh, and Nana Nwachukwu for the incredible support and feedback on this piece. And my heartfelt thank you to Marwa Fatafta for the feedback on this piece.
You can watch the keynote speech [here] (starting from 1.22 hours) but the video is missing the first 5-6 minutes for reasons that were not communicated by the organisers.
You can also download the original slides and the censored version that was presented.