Humanitarian AI: A shift or a continuation?

Within the humanitarian and global development sector, organisations are turning to AI as a means of responding to the increasing numbers of people in need of humanitarian assistance. In this talk we will critically examine the turn to humanitarian AI as part of the wider humanitarian (digital) innovation history and landscape. In doing so, we will question how/if this turn offers opportunities and challenges for shifting paradigms, power asymmetries as well as the nature of humanitarian work and volunteer labour.

About the speaker:

Dr. Reem Talhouk is a Lebanese design researcher and Associate Professor at Northumbria University’s School of Design, Arts and Creative Industries. Her work is at the intersection of Design, Humanitarianism, and Human-Computer Interaction– engaging with feminist, decolonial, and participatory design theories and practices. Reem has conducted research across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Australia, working with refugee communities to explore their use and re-design aspirations of mobile health applications, digital re-settlement processes and food aid technologies. Through this work, Reem and the communities she works with generate counter-narratives and designs of counter-technologies. More recently, Reem has been advising humanitarian and volunteer organisations in the use of AI technologies and conducting research on building refugee Media & AI literacy.