AI for development: implications for theory and practice

The arrival of AI technology promises to add a fascinating new chapter to development theory and practice. Current studies have made good progress in examining the potential contributions of AI to achieving sustainable development goals and addressing challenges in specific development areas (poverty, global health, human rights, environment etc.). However, four lessons stand out when considering the impact of future research on the AI/development nexus: learning how to access and combine data from multiple sources, how to master AI techniques to extract analytical insight, how to build socially impactful AI solutions, and how to apply AI to development in an ethically responsible fashion. This paper makes the argument that AI could radically transform development theory and practice by prompting a rethinking of how data and algorithms come together to generate insights into the way in which development challenges are identified, studied, and managed.