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The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Poverty Reduction

Essay: Using AI to Address Systemic Barriers and Increase Transparency

By Harijs KrauzePublished about a year ago 4 min read
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The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Poverty Reduction
Photo by Mihály Köles on Unsplash

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly integrating with our lives, demanding a deeper examination of its implications. AI-related capabilities and tactics are now beginning to affect many aspects of our society and culture, raising questions of social justice and ethics.

AI has huge potential to improve everyday life due its ability to replicate, extend and amplify human abilities. It also has the potential to be used maliciously, to manipulate, collect data and influence behaviour by exploiting human biases. As a result, governments and organisations must ensure the responsible deployment and integration of AI into our social systems.

AI has already had massive impacts on the way society communicates, including automated customer service in workplaces, online algorithms that shape our social media news feeds and how we access information, and intelligent chatbots and robots that are increasingly taking the place of human companions for some tasks. This is leading to an all-too-familiar, if funny, problem—customers becoming irritable with slow, incomprehensible conversational robots instead of human customer service agents. This is a social issue, as the human touch lost through lack of human interaction can lead to distress and depression.

The rapid growth of AI has also posed social justice issues. AI is being integrated into the facial recognition systems of many police departments and other government organisations. This technology has been shown to have an implicit bias towards certain ethnic groups and genders. Its application has been used to criminalize people, particularly those of racial or ethnic minority backgrounds, and a lack of oversight has resulted in unmonitored and potentially uncontrolled use. This raises serious ethical and moral questions in terms of the potential infringement of privacy and discrimination that could be inherent in the way AI is deployed.

Furthermore, the rise of AI technology has created the potential for serious unemployment issues. Many job roles are now being replaced by AI systems, eliminating the need for human labour. This, in turn, has created a digital divide between those who can and cannot access the technologies, thus deepening an already wide gap in our society.

It is necessary for governments, organisations and individuals to take responsibility for the social consequences of AI. We must use this technology responsibly and ethically, taking into account its potential implications for social justice and ethical issues, and collecting comprehensive data from sources such as public opinion polls and surveys to track and monitor the implementation of AI on a regular basis. By doing this, we can ensure our social systems are fair, equitable and just.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our social lives, including those related to poverty. Poverty is a persistent issue in modern society. In the United States, nearly 40 million people are considered to live in poverty, and worldwide that figure is much higher. In recent years, AI has been introduced to many areas of social programming and poverty-reduction initiatives.

AI technology has the potential to revolutionize poverty-reduction initiatives by targeting systemic barriers and behaviours that contribute to poverty. AI can be used to pinpoint and target social-economic areas of poverty, as well as identify new pathways to providing aid, such as through job training and education. By using AI to analyze existing social and economic data and inform poverty alleviation policies, governments and organizations can better equip those in need with the tools to combat poverty.

In addition to this, AI can also be used to combat poverty in other ways. AI can be used to predict and analyze socioeconomic trends in countries and help to develop sustainable solutions that address root causes of poverty. For example, AI algorithms can be employed to analyze data from healthcare and education systems, providing insight into how investment and resources could be best assigned to improve access and quality of care.

An additional potential application of AI in relation to poverty is in the field of financial inclusion. AI technology can be used to help financial institutions assess risk and provide access to finance to those living in poverty. This can enable lower-income individuals to gain access to funds for job training and education, which can ultimately serve to reduce poverty by providing those in need with the resources they need to gain employment and improve their lives.

Finally, AI can also be applied to combat poverty by increasing transparency and reducing corruption. AI can be used to collect, analyze and monitor data on how funds are being spent to reduce poverty. In doing so, AI can serve as a watchdog to detect fraud and abuse, ensuring that funds reach the right people in an efficient and effective manner.

Overall, AI has immense potential to revolutionize the fight against poverty in the 21st century. By leveraging AI to analyze existing social and economic data, targeting systemic barriers and behaviors, providing access to financial options and increasing overall transparency, AI can go a long way towards making tangible differences in the lives of those living in poverty.

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Harijs Krauze

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